


A Time to Every Purpose

by PrairieDawn



Series: The Not-So-Lost Years [1]
Category: MASH, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Ableism, Academic Wonkery, Academy Fic, Alien-Typical Parenting, Attack it with a stick, Autistic McCoy, Autistic Spock, Cold water drowning, F/M, Good and bad bureaucracy, M/M, Meatballverse, Search and Rescue, Speciesism, Telepathy, adhd kirk, discussion of suicide, edible insects, implied possible child death, neurodivergent original characters, statistics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:53:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 35,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26950951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrairieDawn/pseuds/PrairieDawn
Summary: As the Enterprise nears the end of its five year mission, Starfleet Academy on Earth faces a threat to its charter.  Captain Kirk, along with his bondmate, is called upon to work a different sort of miracle.At the same time, prospective cadets work their way through the application process.
Relationships: James T. Kirk/Spock, Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan/Leonard "Bones" McCoy
Series: The Not-So-Lost Years [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1966705
Comments: 260
Kudos: 101





	1. A Time to Every Purpose

**Author's Note:**

> And here we go, diving into this sequel to Welcome to 1951. The structure is still episodic, build around five chapter episodes. There will be a loose arc, a cast of OCs who will gradually take over the bulk of the narrative, though the familiar characters will still be involved.
> 
> There are a few MASH characters in the story, which is why I've included the fandom in the tags, but almost all of the action in this series occurs on the TOSverse Earth.

Admiral Bob Comsol strode through the airy glass and metal walled halls of Starfleet Command, his datapad tucked under one arm. His yeoman kept up with quick steps, skipping ahead to pull open the conference room door so he could stalk into the room without breaking his stride. Admiral Joyce sat at the head of the table with a drawn look on his face and a flurry of flimsies and pads scattered on the table in front of him. Admirals Enwright, Komack, and Maina sat at the three other compass points around the table, Komack with a regulation stiffness that was almost prim. Enwright was scrolling through his datapad and barely looked up long enough to acknowledge Bob’s presence. Maina put her pad down when he entered and nodded a greeting.

Bob covered the distance to Admiral Joyce’s seat in three purposeful steps, slapped the datapad onto the table’s polished mahogany surface, and glared at the Starfleet Academy Commandant, who returned his sharp gaze wanly. “Joyce, we can’t afford to keep kicking the can down the road. Starfleet Academy isn’t half the organization it was before the war and you’ve had over a decade to recover. The Federation Council is talking about pulling our charter and I’m not sure I blame them.”

Admiral Enwright leaned back in his upholstered conference room chair, smiling dismissively. “I told you, Bob, there’s no need to take this sort of thing seriously, the Federation Council has been complaining about the makeup of Starfleet for years and they never do anything substantive about it.”

Admiral Joyce shook his head. “They haven’t had a serious contender for the Academy charter until now. Argelius’ willingness to be considered as a new home for the main Starfleet Academy campus has changed the game completely.” He leaned forward in his chair in a move intended to be aggressive, but which ended in him leaning hard on his elbows and staring at his pile of paperwork. “Argelius would be a disaster for military readiness.”

“We have four years, that’s one Academy class start to finish, to turn our numbers around. And in so doing hold on to Earth’s prominence in guiding military strategy in the Federation,” Bob Comsol added.

Joyce nodded agreement, dragging a hand down his face in what might have been frustration. Or despair. “I just don’t see how we can make the kind of sweeping changes we’d need to meet the council’s demands.”

Lila Maina held up a hand. “I agree it’s going to be difficult, but let’s look at this from the Council’s point of view. One hundred years ago, Starfleet Academy was chartered as a combined exploratory and defensive force representing the entire Federation, with the primary campus situated here in San Francisco. The charter provided for a long adjustment period for Starfleet to determine how best to integrate multiple species with different cultural and physical needs.” 

“They gave us a century to get the makeup of Starfleet personnel graduating this campus to fifty-fifty human and nonhuman,” Komack noted. “I know that. And right now we are sitting at six percent, with attrition at ten percent per year. Earth supplies nearly half of Starfleet’s personnel and infrastructure, but we won’t be able to hold on to that position if we don’t live up to our promises.”

Joyce looked up from the analysis on his datapad. “The changes I made were necessary to ensure uniform interpretation of regulations and a cohesive command structure after the war.”

“Admiral Joyce,” Lila Maina noted, “As a result of those changes we’ve gone from graduating a high of twenty-one percent nonhumans just before the war to the current seven percent. We’ve seen drops across the board: Fewer nonhumans apply, fewer of those who do are admitted, and even fewer of the ones who matriculate make it through the program.”

“Perhaps an integrated Starfleet was a mistake,” Enwright suggested. “Maybe we’ll never be able to build a Fleet with that many nonhumans in it.”

“I don’t think so,” Maina said. “We can do much better. We have done better than we’re doing now. What we need to do is figure out exactly what is causing us to wash out nonhuman cadets and then figure out how to fix the problem.”

“Remember, Starfleet is the face of the Federation to all the newer members, and for those with less developed space presence, sending their young people here is one of the most important ways we get those worlds invested in the Federation.”

Joyce swiveled toward Maina, frowning. “You’re suggesting we water down the Academy curriculum to accommodate these cadets?”

“I’m suggesting that we need fresh eyes on the problem and a willingness to try something new for a change,” Maina corrected. “And I think that means we need to get new blood in place now rather than sit around waiting for aging admirals to retire.”

“I’m not that old,” Joyce snapped.

Komack tapped his stylus on the table, thinking. “Enterprise is wrapping up her five year mission and is due for a refit. Their bridge crew is known for, shall we say, successfully applying unorthodox solutions to difficult problems.”

“What are you suggesting?”

Komack considered. “We bring Kirk in as Commandant of Cadets. We’ll have Commander Spock overhaul the science department and McCoy have a look at ‘fleet medical training. Kirk and McCoy are both masters of lateral thinking and Spock is as brilliant in the classroom as he is in the lab. Bringing in a team that already works well together will save time. Let them choose their staff and throw ideas on curriculum and policy changes to the wall and see what sticks.”

“Sounds risky. Kirk is best at managing crises, not wiping plebes’ asses for them,” Enwright argued.

“What about this doesn’t look like a crisis to you?” Maina flicked her fingers over her datapad. “The Council’s demands are as follows: Improve retention of first year nonhuman students from sixty-nine percent to eighty percent in the first year and eighty five percent in the second year, and increase recruitment by at least ten percent per year starting in year two. Those are going to be hard numbers to make without damaging our readiness—we’re going to need creative approaches and no small amount of luck.”

“The Enterprise crew certainly are lucky,” Enwright groused.

Joyce let his head slip down to rest on his hands as though he was nursing a headache. “This plan displaces a lot of my people, especially if Kirk fills in the lower ranks with his own.”

Bob frowned at the Academy head. Joyce had spent far too long coasting along with his staff. “Your people could stand to log some space hours.”

“Are you suggesting the instructors at Starfleet Academy are out of touch?” Joyce snapped. 

“Joyce, you’ve got people here who haven’t left the Sol system since their cadet cruises. Uly, I like Kirk for the Commandant of Cadets position and I’m on board with letting him choose his staff. Joyce, I’m keeping you on in the top spot for continuity, but I expect you to work with Kirk, not against him.”

“If you think I’m going to let some young hotshot turn this campus upside down—”

“Then you’re absolutely right, because you are. Unless you feel like retiring a few years early.” Bob was done dealing with Joyce and his rigid, bureaucratic attitude, along with the circle of reactionary cronies he’d managed to accumulate over the last decade.

“Uly, draft the order and get it to Kirk ASAP, along with all the cadet data. We want them to hit the ground running in May.”

“He’s going to hate this,” Komack noted.

“He may well. But at least this time we’re not asking him to forgo obtaining lifesaving medical treatment for his first officer so his ship could make a pretty show.” The dig was a little too hard for Bob to resist.

Komack winced. “I’m still sore from the ass reaming Ambassador Sarek gave me over that, I do not need reminding, Bob.”

“Might I suggest you two sweeten the pot by offering him Enterprise back after the refit? You know he’s been campaigning for a second five year exploratory mission,” Maina suggested.

Bob paused to consider. “Ordinarily, I’d promote him to Admiral if he’s successful, but you’re right, chaining him to a desk would be a punishment, not a reward. Go ahead and make him the offer.”

*

Jim had been expecting an official message from the Admiralty, but his chest still tightened when the official seal appeared on his screen. It seemed like he had just gotten his ship back and now he was going to be preparing to lose it, possibly for good.

He could call Spock in for moral support, but it was his job to interpret the orders of the Admiralty to his officers, not the other way round. He pulled up the message. It was from Komack, of course. He wasn’t sure he could plow through Komack’s condescending prose sober, but he resolved to give it a shot.

> Stardate 8060.7
> 
> From: Admiral G. Ulysses Komack  
>  To: Captain James T. Kirk.
> 
> Subj: Assignment Post Five Year Mission
> 
> Encl: Data file. Cadet Retention Raw Data 2265-2270 Academic Years  
>  Data file. Cadet Retention Analysis by demographics  
>  Official Notice. Starfleet Academy Earth Campus Noncompliance With Federation Council Cooperation Targets
> 
> 1\. You are hereby ordered to report to Starfleet Headquarters in San Francisco, California, Earth in order to assume the role of Starfleet Academy Commandant of Cadets on June 1st, 2271 C.E, Stardate 8152.08 during the period Enterprise will be in dry dock for a major refit. Your task will be to ensure that Starfleet Academy meets remedial targets in the recruitment and retention of nonhuman cadets as detailed in the Federation Council Official Notice.
> 
> 2\. You may staff the Academy Administration with officers of your choice. Make your selections known by Stardate 8091. You and your staff are authorized to make any changes to recruitment strategies, curriculum, and supplemental services you see fit. Admiral Hunter Joyce remains nominally superior to you but has been ordered to comply with your recommendations.
> 
> 3\. Satisfactory completion of this mission will place you in primary consideration for the captaincy of Enterprise post-refit.
> 
> 4\. All requests for additional information will be handled by Commander Kate Zhou in the Starfleet Academy Records office.
> 
> G. U. Komack  
>  Admiral Gideon Ulysses Komack, Starfleet Command

Jim read the memo three times through. On the one hand, the Enterprise was scheduled to be in dry dock for a minimum of three years to be rebuilt from the inside out, which seemed like a long time to be stuck on the ground. There was also a good chance they’d promote him out of the Captain’s chair, regardless of the not-a-promise made in item three. On the other, too many new ensigns arrived on his ship with unbecoming prejudices and bad habits he and his senior staff spent significant amounts of time training out of them.

He pulled up the Official Notice and his heart sank. He either made what looked like massive improvements in the next few years or he could very well be the last Commandant of Cadets on the San Francisco campus.

He hailed the bridge. “Spock, could you meet me in my ready room?”

“Of course, Captain,” Spock replied and was in the room a few seconds later. He slid into the seat next to Jim.

“I’ll just let you read this and tell me what you think,” Jim said, turning the screen toward Spock. 

His bondmate fell silent while he perused the documents. Jim watched his face intently even as he held himself open to whatever Spock might allow to pass to him over their bond. He hadn’t been able to sort out how he felt about their assignment himself, no more than a nebulous, whirling something in the center of his chest. This was not his usual brand of crisis and he wasn’t sure he was equipped to solve it.

And yet, as one minute passed, and another, and Spock turned from the Federation Council’s warning to the demographic data, something electric sparked in his chest, bright and clean and powerful, growing stronger as he waited tensely at Spock’s side for him to speak. Finally, he could no longer contain himself. “What is it, Spock?”

Spock turned toward him with an almost-smile. “A chance to put our time on Earth to good use,” he said mildly.

“You seem a lot happier than I thought you would be,” Jim said.

“Logically, given that you and I have requested to serve together and any other ship you could be given would be a demotion, I expected you and I would be assigned either to Earth or to a Starbase. Administrative duties would be a waste of your skills unless they were put to use in solving a truly difficult and critically important problem. I am gratified that a worthy challenge has been provided.”

“You really are looking forward to this,” Jim said, still not comprehending.

Spock turned to fully face him and rested his hands on Jim’s own. “What was the Academy like for you?”

Jim shrugged. “I was never bored,” he said. “Studying, training, not enough sleep—it was hard, but I guess, a good kind of hard. It made me more than I had been, showed me what I was capable of.”

“Were you aware that I nearly returned to Vulcan after my first semester?”

“No, I wasn’t. Why? The physical training could hardly have challenged you and I already know you blew everyone away with your intelligence. Was it just too easy?”

Spock breathed out a little more forcefully than usual, though to call it a sigh would have been exaggerating. “To the contrary.” He looked away for a moment as though to gather his thoughts. “It was overwhelming. I had never had to share sleeping quarters, and suddenly found myself sharing a small cabin with three roommates. It sounded to me as though everyone was shouting continuously—humans speak considerably louder than Vulcans most of the time, and my mother learned to be soft spoken among Vulcans as a consequence. The fact that very few humans have learned to shield their minds was particularly distressing. I occasionally suffered my roommates’ dreams, but could not admit to doing so without risking disciplinary action.”

“Archer Hall must have been miserable,” Jim said with a knowing groan.

“Indeed.”

“Frankly I don’t know anyone who didn’t hate classes in Archer Hall.”

“And I never realized that I was not alone in that regard. I did not know the unspoken rules of interaction with humans.”

“Even with Sarek for a father?”

“My father and I may have stopped speaking for over a decade when I chose Starfleet over the VSA, but our relationship was strained through most of my adolescence. He did not share his insights into human behavior, and my mother’s behavior more closely approximates Vulcan norms. In any case, I was unable to make the social connections my instructors deemed necessary in a Starfleet officer, nor did I understand why such connections were necessary.”

“Why did you stick it out?”

“I had no desire to return home and prove my father correct, and I could conceive of nowhere else to go.”

Jim turned his chair just enough that their knees brushed together. “So, you think we can fix this.”

“I do not know if we can, but I believe that there are few ways we could better spend our time than in making the attempt.”

*  
Lessl curled in her niche in the family’s quarters, surrounded by her sisters’ scattered clothes. She hooked St’tel’s underclothes with a clawed finger and flipped them across the room into her oldest sister’s alcove, clearing her desk’s screen. She pulled up the application to read it through one more time. “Prospective division and study emphasis,” Lessl read. She scrolled through the options for what had to be the fifth time. She was supposed to choose Command. Her father expected it, her sponsor almost certainly expected it, but the thought fit her like someone else’s clothes. Instead, she scrolled to “Sciences; Organismal Biology” and ticked the box.

Her father had been surprisingly open to her decision to apply to the Starfleet Ally Exchange program, perhaps because of his strange friendship with the gregarious human Starfleet captain who had agreed to be her sponsor. More likely he didn’t think she was tough enough to compete with her older sisters and he was fond enough of her not to let nature take its course. 

For a moment, she considered sending the application off without showing it to him, but the fear that she would lose her place at the Academy, even with a famous sponsor, over a typo made her pull up the application on her datapad and take it up to her father’s work niche. He flicked through it in silence for several minutes, stalled on the essay, she was sure, a low hiss building in his throat. Lessl stepped out of reach of his claws. He shoved it back at her when he finished. “Sciences? You’re not so useless you have to settle for number shuffling.”

“Father, I—”

“You are Gorn! You will command rings around the Federation bureaucrats in Starfleet. Leave the science to the Vulcans.”

She tilted her head to the side submissively. “Of course, Father. I believed that, as you have said my sisters are superior strategists and commanders, I would have the most success in a less demanding field.” It burned her tongue to suggest biology was a field for cowardly number crunchers, but she only had to stay on his good side until she reached the Academy grounds; after that, he would have no control over her.

“Put that out of mind, little Lessl. You are more than adequate to command a Starfleet ship. Now, fix that essay and apply to the division to which you belong. I am certain Kirk would be disappointed if you failed to emulate him.”

“Of course.” Her sisters would have argued, she was sure, but they had earned that right with fighting skills and competent weapons scores. Talking back would only get her cuffed across the back with claws out, and even though she was tough enough to take deserved pain, she was fond of her tunic and didn’t want it torn or soiled. Her father was only allowing her to serve as a diplomatic offering to the Federation because she was more conciliatory than her sisters—almost human, as they frequently reminded her with hissing sneers. She didn’t want to be an adequate captain when she knew she could be an exceptional scientist. 

She returned to her niche in the family quarters. Shrisi was sitting in her spot. Lessl rushed her but was knocked to the floor by a kick aimed with casual contempt. “Biology? You still playing with your food, runt?”

“Father says I should change it.”

“To what, waste reclamation? What am I saying, biology practically is waste reclamation. Here, I’ll fix it for you and send it off,” she said.

Lessl threw herself between Shrisi and the desk with enough force to crack the screen and took a bite out of her sister’s neck fringe. Shrisi roared. Lessl found herself pressed into the cracked surface of her desk with her sister’s full weight on her back. There was a telltale ripping noise as her tunic lost its battle with Shrisi’s claws.

The send button was right beneath Lessl’s cheek. She slid one claw up to it, ignoring whatever Shrisi was hissing into her ear and pushed the button, then flipped over to pummel her sister into the back wall of the niche with her feet. The desk snapped off its hinge and crashed to the floor, shattering and dropping her to the floor on top of it.

“I’d rip your throat out but I don’t want to clean this mess up myself,” Shrisi snapped. She stepped over Lessl and the broken desk, shards of tempered glass crunching under her feet. 

If Lessl was lucky, her father would be none the wiser until it was far too late for him to complain. If she was unlucky, she would just blame Shrisi for sending the application out unfinished.

She lay in the shattered remains of her desk until she caught her breath, then collected the vac to clean up the mess. Once she’d dragged the broken desk away to an airlock—she should keep it to salvage for parts, but she’d rather not have to explain how it got broken—she found the regen kit and closed the cuts on her face except for one just above her right eye she thought would look rakish when it healed. If she wanted it off later she could fix it then. The tunic was a total loss. She threw that into the organics recycler and put on an old black one she didn’t mind bleeding all over, then collected a spare desktop from the cargo bay and bolted it into place, crawled into her niche, and spent the next hour programming an invisible forcefield around it that would automatically fling Shrisi into the nearest wall if she came within a body length of Lessl’s space. Number shuffling had its uses.


	2. Gathering the team

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jim and Spock bring their proposal to McCoy, Uhura, and Arex, and we meet the second of the cadets we'll be following through their first weeks and months at the academy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are a lot of numbers in this one. Sorry not sorry. Also you should be grateful I didn't link a spreadsheet.
> 
> The warning about edible insects involves the casual consumption of insect larvae by an avianoid, prepared in a way more or less similar to the way humans prepare some edible arthropods.

Leonard leaned back in his office chair with his feet on his desk and a datapad in his hands, ostensibly catching up on charts. He was partly hiding from Christine and Margaret, who had developed a scary tendency to swing from sniping at each other to conspiring against him. He’d thought when they were fighting he’d give anything for them to get along, but now, as the two of them reorganized his Sickbay for their convenience and ganged up on him mercilessly with requests for new equipment he had found it necessary to beat a strategic retreat.

His office door chimed. He opened his mouth to tell the ladies to leave him be for twenty minutes when he caught sight of Jim and Spock through the window. “Come,” he said, and the door slid open.

Spock sat in one of the spare chairs. Jim stood behind him, hands almost on the Vulcan’s shoulders, his eyes restlessly roving the room before settling on Leonard. “Well, spit it out, you two,” Leonard prompted.

Jim huffed out a breath. “We got our orders. Or to be more exact, I got my orders.”

Leonard took a hard look at the captain. He looked stressed. The wrinkling forehead, the restless hands, the repeated glances toward his security blanket, ahem, bondmate. “They’re not splitting the two of you up, are they? Because If they are I’ll write them a medical opinion that will make their hair curl.”

“Our proximity is not, strictly speaking, medically necessary,” Spock noted.

“The hell it ain’t! Spock, you have no guarantee that you’ll be on a seven-year cycle. None. Your great aunt sent me a medical article a couple months ago. There’s a hybrid about five years younger than you who just had his second cycle—two years after his first.”

Spock continued, “Regardless, we are not being separated by the admiralty. In fact, we came here to request that you join us on our next assignment.”

Leonard pushed back from his desk. “I dunno. I’ve been looking forward to having real ground beneath my feet and real sky over my head.”

Jim turned the chair and straddled it. “Well, how does Starfleet Academy sound?”

On the surface, it sounded pretty damn good, depending on what he’d be doing. He raised an eyebrow in surprise, realized how much he looked like Spock, and smirked. “How’d they get you to agree to be stuck on the ground running after a bunch of snot-nosed cadets?”

“They offered me another five-year mission after the refit. And they’re letting me pick my staff. I want you to overhaul the medical program top to bottom, from corpsmen to physicians.”

That would be nice if it could happen. “No way I’ll be able to make the kind of changes need to be made, not with the Admiralty breathing down my neck.”

“That’s just it. They won’t be. At least not as much.”

“And why might that be?” It was going to take a lot more than blithe assurances to suspend Leonard’s mountain of disbelief.

Spock steepled his hands on the table, looking a smug as Leonard had ever seen him. “Starfleet Academy is at risk of losing its charter due to systemic discrimination against nonhuman cadets. Our orders are to make whatever changes are necessary to meet the remedial targets required by the Federation Council.”

“And what makes you think I’m the person for that job? It took me too many years to look past those ears, Spock.”

Jim tapped the desk between them. “That’s exactly why we need you, Bones. You understand the prejudices some of the human cadets are coming in with and you can help us figure out how to move them past those prejudices.”

“Hmm.” The new nurses and techs rotating through the Enterprise medical staff did leave something to be desired. They were up to date on combat first aid, but their xeno was weak and they didn’t have the experience in infectious diseases that was more useful on exploratory missions. And then there was his love life to consider. “I suppose it does keep me close to Margaret. You know the way they’ve got things set up right now, she’s got to do a full plebe year with cadets half her age to have her rank transfer?”

“Let’s see what we can do about that,” Jim told him. “Not that I think she shouldn’t get some training, but throwing her into the barracks with a bunch of teenagers seems a bit unnecessary.”

Leonard was already working his way through the curriculum in his head. “So you think that while we’re solving Starfleet’s diversity problem we could train these kids in some proper field first aid? The new ones seem to think they’ll always have a fully charged tissue regenerator, medical tricorder, and portable sterile field wherever they go. I could build a whole course around the times I had to patch one of you two up with nothing but strips of uniform and sticks.”

Jim chuckled. “That’s ironic, coming from you. I’ve been thinking about how we could train the arrogance out of the kids we get assigned here. There’s no way some of those ensigns could have made it through the Academy during our time without someone knocking some sense into them.”

“Good luck with that,” McCoy quipped. 

Jim turned to Spock. “Can you get the demographic analysis to Bones and me by the end of the week? I’m going to look over the command structure within the Academy, see what positions I want to fill.”

“Easily, Captain.”

“Good. Now I know I’m going to want Uhura and Sulu, but only if they want to be there. Chekov’s asked for a ground assignment on Earthtoo and I’m going to do my best to see that he gets it. I’d love to at least get consultation from M’ress and Arex, though I’m sure they’re not going to want to be grounded for long this early in their careers. If there’s anyone else in your departments you think would be a good fit, let me know.”

“He still sweet on Stalin’s daughter?” McCoy asked, his voice still tinged with disbelief. The young woman had been a pleasant surprise, one of the few he and Spock encountered in their captivity; intelligent, compassionate, and tough-minded. It didn’t hurt that Ambassador Roosevelt had been able to look past the issues between their two governments and take the young woman under her wing.

“Svetlana Alliluyeva has performed her ambassadorial duties admirably and shows great leadership potential. The positive effects of Chekov entering into a relationship with her are already visible in Earthtoo’s Soviet-controlled regions,” Spock noted.

“Nice to know you approve, Spock,” Leonard snorted. And as far as that went, Chekov could do a lot worse than Alliluyeva.

Jim was getting that moony look again. “Hard to believe this will all be gone in a few months,” he said, dragging his hand down the doorframe. He caught Leonard watching him and tapped the frame sharply.

Leonard chuckled. “You’re a sentimental fool, Jim. I for one will be glad to have an updated Sickbay—that is if I decide to sign on for another five-year mission. I might just decide to retire.”

Spock frowned at him. “You are forty-four years old. When the next five-year mission begins, you will be forty-eight—perhaps forty-nine. That is roughly the average age of a chief medical officer on a starship this size. You are hardly of an age to retire.”

“What would you know about it?” McCoy snapped but softened the barb with a grin. “Every year chasing after the two of you counts as ten.”

*

By the time Spock had his report completed late the next day, Arex, Uhura and Sulu had already agreed to join them. Jim decided to make a bit of a party of their data analysis meeting in hopes it might get his crew to share some Academy stories. He’d reserved the smallest of the rec rooms, made sure there would be snacks, including fruit and veggies to appease Bones, and spread the report out on a large round table along with datapads to do any number crunching Spock hadn’t already done for them.

Bones arrived first, his contribution to the evening’s refreshments tucked under his arm. “Figured we’d break out the good stuff after we’ve made some progress, chase all the numbers out of our heads.”

“Just not so much we have to do it all over again next week because we can’t remember.”

“I dunno, sounds like a solid plan to me.” He set the bottles of amber liquid on the side table next to the chips and salsa.

Sulu and Arex arrived next, together, discussing some restaurant in San Francisco Jim didn’t remember. They pulled up chairs at the round table. Uhura followed shortly after. At exactly 1900 hours ship’s time, Spock arrived and took his place at the table. “I trust you have all read the summary I sent you at 1600?”

Nods all around. Jim began. “The goal we’ve been given is to increase diversity at Starfleet Academy, a goal I consider well worth the effort. Now, Spock, Bones, and I graduated before the Klingon War when the Academy was more diverse than it is now. We’re hoping we can bring back some traditions that got thrown out when the most recent batch of Admirals got hold of the place. Arex, Sulu, and Uhura, you all attended under the current leadership—I’m hoping you can let us know how things have changed.”

He turned to Spock. “Spock’s been crunching the numbers on student data from the past five years for clues to what makes some cadets wash out. What have you got for us?”

“I have examined those demographic trends that can be isolated from student records. In particular, I examined species, status of the home planet within the Federation, degree of similarity to Earth human appearance and function, sensory and cognitive processing differences, trauma flags, and gender identification. I looked at both human and nonhuman students.”

“So, I assume you found some trends?”

“Overall retention rate for the first year is eighty-seven percent. Cadets falling into these categories had between an eighty and fifty percent chance of completing the first year: Nonhuman Federation members, cognitive divergent humans and humanoids, cadets with esper ratings above 220, cadets with known significant childhood trauma, and cadets matriculating prior to the seventeenth birthday or species equivalent.”

“Sounds to me like the first thing we do is stop admitting babies,” Bones noted.

“Perhaps, though there are some issues to be addressed around the admission of underage cadets,” Spock said.

Jim nodded grimly. “A lot of younger cadets are in difficult circumstances. If we wait, we could lose them.”

“There is significant overlap between the childhood trauma and early admissions categories,” Spock noted. “Some cadets are at even higher risk. Cadets from Federation provisional members and protectorates, cadets with esper ratings higher than 260, and cadets with body plans that differ from the standard human-centric model finish their first year less than half the time. The Academy has not to date graduated a single nonhumanoid cadet since the war, despite nine attempts.”

Sulu glanced at Arex, who noted, “I am classified as humanoid, as human-centric as that term is. Though I admit I found my first year at the Academy extraordinarily difficult.”

“Enlighten us,” Jim prompted.

“I was unable to fit most of the furnishings. Beds were too short, chairs and consoles too low. I have significantly less muscle mass than the average human and my limbs move differently, so physical training was more challenging. I also do not perceive color in the same way humans do, so screens were very difficult to read until I was supplied with corrective contact lenses. Many of my instructors perceived my difficulties as signs of laziness or deliberate attempts to obtain special privileges.”

“I remember when we reprogrammed the bridge consoles for you. It was a couple of hours' work. Nothing, really,” Sulu assured Arex.

“Lieutenant Arex, have you considered my offer of a position at the Academy? Your input in designing workstations would be invaluable.”

“I have not yet decided whether I wish to spend several years on Earth,” Arex replied.

Jim chuckled, “So, nonhumanoids, provisionals and protectorates, and espers. We can sure pick them, can’t we?”

“What do you mean?” Sulu asked.

McCoy leaned back in his chair. “He means he’s sponsoring in the first Gorn, Spock managed to get a Horta kid in, they grow up fast apparently, and Uhura’s backing Radar O’Reilly.”

“What about you?”

“Med student recommended by a colleague in Canada. Vulcan/Human hybrid. Surprised, Spock?”

“I might have been some years ago, Doctor. However, I have since learned that your insensitive remarks about my heritage are largely what you might call sour grapes.”

McCoy snorted.

“What about you, Sulu, you sponsoring anyone?”

“Kid from a group home on Deneva.”

“High risk, high reward, that’s us,” Jim said. “Well, I guess that means we’ve got skin in the game. So now we have an idea of who. Next thing to figure out is why.”

Uhura picked up a datapad. “Did we get copies of cadet resignation letters?”

“We have not yet been given a sample of the letters themselves, but we were given summary data. Students from provisionals and protectorates most often fail academically, though expulsion for misconduct is a secondary cause. Students with esper ratings over three hundred generally take medical discharges, generally within days of arrival, while those scoring between two hundred sixty and three hundred either suffer academically or withdraw by choice. The more physically dissimilar humanoids, like Arex, suffer serious injuries and illnesses more frequently and are also more likely to withdraw.”

Uhura noted, “I hate to add insult to injury here, Captain, but I also had a look at some numbers, and not only has Starfleet become more human in the last decade or so, it has also become more male and more European, especially at ranks of Commander and above.”

“I think we’ve all noticed that,” Spock agreed.

Jim blinked. It hadn’t occurred to him until that moment, even though it should have been obvious, was obvious in retrospect. “I guess the first thing to do is to promote you and Sulu to Commander,” he blurted.

“It would be a start,” Uhura said wryly.

“I do intend to push through promotions for both of you, you’re overdue as it is, but you’re absolutely right. Reactionary policies tend to build upon themselves. Spock, you’re our only telepath, and I’m beginning to see why. Can you write up a list of recommendations? And Mr. Arex, I’m putting you on accommodations for physical and physiological differences. Don’t restrict yourself to your own species, do some research, and look at the data we’ve been given. Bones, can you see what you can find out about mental health services on campus?”

Bones nodded before getting up to collect the bourbon and glasses. “I had a quick look already and inadequate doesn’t begin to describe it.”

“Uhura, could you have a look at what we might do to support the cadets from planets new to the Federation, and Mr. Sulu, I’d like you to work with Mr. Arex. You two divide up the topic however you see fit. Now, Bones. Bourbon.”

“Happy to oblige. I’m hoping to hear some good Academy stories tonight to compensate for all this number crunching.”

*

It was a fine afternoon for flying. The clouds stretched into thin ribbons against the bright blue sky, and the sun-warmed ground yielded chains of thermals. Nen could soar effortlessly for hours, circling his family’s home and workshop, looking down on the chunky deep blue ships his father’s team had built and at the sleek white and gray shuttle resting beside them, the unfamiliar blocky writing of their interstellar visitors marking its side. He could see his father, small and dark as his ships, standing next to the tall, solid form of the human captain who had become his friend. He hoped to have a chance to talk to the captain and her engineer a few more times before they left. It would make him happy to know his research might be appreciated and maybe even continued on another world. He was kidding himself, of course. The aliens were so much more advanced than his own people. Nen was certain they could learn nothing from a fifteen-year-old fledgling’s interest in the atmospheres of stars.

He’d been in the air since just after lunch. It was high time to return to the ground, perhaps see if his parents needed help getting the evening meal together. They were so busy since the aliens came that most likely they planned to eat a handful of kiipi nuts and fruit while pecking at the ships. He could at least fry up some grubs for everyone to share. He took his time circling toward the landing field, his spiraling descent centered on his father and Captain Baxter. At the last moment, he tucked in his wings, stalled, and dropped the last couple of meters to alight a short walk from where his father stood. The walking part was the challenge. He knew his gait rolled too much from side to side, his wings held too far from his body for balance rather than tucked in neatly at his sides. His magnetic field sense dragged at him, seemed to pull him into the alien and his father, so he stumbled when he got close and stopped, a step too far away to be polite.

“Taking advantage of the weather?” his father whistled fondly.

Nen dropped his head to preen his chest feathers shyly. “Best day all year,” he agreed.

The alien made the face that meant bright, hopeful, happy—stretching the soft flesh that surrounded her mouth instead of a beak. “Just the young man I want to see.”

Nen bobbed his head to preen again. “I am happy to see you as well.”

“Walk with me, son.”

“I am not,” he started to say but stopped himself. “Why do you say son?” The captain had long legs. It was a struggle to keep up without hopping forward every other step.

“Humans sometimes use the term to address a promising youth to whom they feel some affection.”

He clicked his beak to show understanding, then said, “Not promising.” His feathers stood up around his shoulders in spite of his attempt to settle them. The truth, unadorned, was always best. “In eighteen days, at the most, I must present myself for placement testing. If my illness were discovered, I would be placed in a quarantine house, where I would likely not live to see the turning of the year.” It had been impossible to conceal his neurological illness from the alien visitors’ advanced scanners. He had expected them to react with disgust, but to his surprise, they had behaved as if his insanity was not a cause for shame.

Captain Baxter nodded understanding. “You don’t intend to let your illness be discovered.”

“No. When you leave here, I will take my afternoon flight over the ocean and not return.” He tilted his head toward the glittering water. “There are atolls,” he said more quietly, his words true even if the intent behind them was a lie.

“So your father tells me. He wants me to convince you to stick it out. It might not be all that long before Hanle has access to Federation medicine. A few years.”

Stick what out? “I do not have years.”

Captain Baxter clasped her hands behind her back and stared pointedly at the ground for the next few steps. Cautious, nervous, perhaps. Measuring each step as if it were more important than it could possibly be. She stopped a wingspan from her shuttle. “There may be another way.”

Nen felt his shoulders drop. He had taken such a long time to accept the reality of his circumstances, so long that exhaustion made him hesitate to grasp at hope. “I do not think there can be.”

“There are a few slots reserved at Starfleet Academy for promising—” here she held up a hand to forestall his protest, “young people from Federation protectorates, probationary members, and allies. It just so happens I am in a position to sponsor someone of my choice. If you’re willing, I’d like to sponsor you.”

Nen stopped short. “I do not think I am well suited to formal schooling. It would make my condition worse. Perhaps more quickly than even the quarantine house would.”

They reached her gleaming white shuttle. “In any case, that’s not the point,” she said. “Not entirely at least. I think you could thrive in Starfleet, but the moment you set foot on the Academy grounds you have access to one of the finest medical facilities in all of the Federation. Regardless of whether you end up choosing a career with us, you’ll have access to treatments you can’t get here.”

Nen pondered her words, hardly understanding them. He had trained himself for so long to accept that his world was circumscribed in time and space; the cliffside observatory and shipyards, his own family, and sixteen years. “May I have some time to think?”

“Take whatever time you need. The diplomatic team is shipping out in ten days, and there’s a space for you if you want it.”

Nen clicked his beak, but couldn’t bring himself to speak. He bounced his head twice to show his understanding in the way of the alien captain’s people, and half hopped, half fluttered to the kitchen alcove. He needed something to do with his hands to keep his thoughts from flying circles in his head. Supper. The family and the alien visitors would need to eat, and just as he thought, no one had bothered to prepare anything. He reached into the grub box with the strainer to collect a few dozen finger-sized wrigglers, stopping to pick vegetable scraps out of the strainer and toss them back in the bin. He gave the grubs a good wash under running water, rolling them to empty their guts, and threw them into hot oil to cook until they crisped. Even the humans liked them fried and seasoned, and they claimed not to eat land arthropods.

While he tossed them in the pan, he considered the human captain’s offer. On the one hand, it was a chance at life, the first real chance at seeing adulthood he’d ever had. On the other hand, leaving with them could be as final a journey as his planned flight out over the sea. He might never see his family again, and he would be alone, the only one of his kind, among strangers with mysterious ways and dangerous superstitions.

He shook the fried grubs into a strainer, tossed them with salt and a little of Captain Baxter’s gift of Cajun seasoning, then into a basket to carry to the Federation scientists and his parents. His father sat in the back of the shuttle chatting with Captain Baxter and the blue one, the Andorian, Chev. The short walk cooled the grubs enough to be edible, and he popped a couple in his mouth before passing the basket to his father. The Starfleet shuttle represented one future, a terrifying leap into the unknown. The sea on his right wing represented no future at all. The choice before him was plain. He snapped his beak decisively and said, “I accept your offer with gratitude, Captain Baxter. Tell me what I must do to be worthy of this Starfleet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Critical Thinking Question: Have you ever eaten insects on purpose? How do you feel about the (newborn) movement to reduce our carbon footprints by obtaining some or all of our animal protein from insects?


	3. Three Surprises

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A prospective cadet receives his acceptance letter, Jim receives a rude call during off hours, and Margaret almost gets the news she's been waiting for for months.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want you all to know that this first episode is going to be double length (10 chapters) and a bit different in structure than the rest, because there's so much to set up.

The lab filled quickly with the warm and heavy scent of melted polymer. Luc Olamina checked the tray to ensure it was perfectly level, then lowered the temperature three degrees. The fluid in the tray looked superficially like water, glassily still and perfectly transparent, though to Luc’s practiced eye the differences in viscosity and surface tension were obvious. He lowered the temperature another two degrees, waited three minutes, then another one point five degrees. The texture of the fluid changed, became subtly glittering, almost grainy, and he peered into the microscope to confirm that tiny spicules were forming and coalescing into octagonal snowflake like arrays.

His datapad chimed again, but he ignored it, working out the tension from deferring the task with tapping fingers, his left hand beating a quick rhythm onto his right forearm. Half a degree more. The liquid’s transformation into a fractally divided solid proceeded exponentially, the floating white motes increasing gradually in number, then joining up into fluffy mats—then all at once, in the space of less than four seconds, the fluid transformed into a glistening white panel. Luc tapped a button on his datapad and the panel dropped smoothly and rapidly into a second clear fluid for five seconds, then was raised, now silvery, to be washed and cooled and cut into smaller tiles.

The process produced slightly malleable semiconductive networks that showed promise as a medium for neural network computing.

Now he could check his datapad for messages. The chrono claimed it was only sixteen hundred hours ship’s time, so it couldn’t be his mother reminding him to eat. He dropped into a seat. It was a message from the Starfleet Academy registrar’s office, with files attached. His heart thrummed in his chest, the result of excitement, but an unpleasant sensation nonetheless. He took care to set the datapad on the desk before leaping out of his chair to pace the room, hands fluttering around his face and head, smoothing down his shirt, then returning to flutter like startled birds in front of his eyes.

He had more thoughts than his head could contain and more feelings than his chest could hold. He was sure that if he looked down he would find that his midsection had expanded like a balloon. There was a bubbling, light sound in the air—laughter—he touched his mouth. It was not his own laughter and he looked through his fingers at Cori, whose whole body was smiling for him.

In a little while, when he’d settled enough to find his words, he pulled her into a hug and they jumped together. “I got in!” he said and laughed along with her. Mom was standing in the doorway. She flowed toward him as smoothly as water pouring over round stones and waited beside him until he reached out to squeeze her to him in turn.

He sat, turned on his metronome, and opened the letter. “We are pleased to inform you,” it began.

There were tasks that must be accomplished in the months before he would set foot on the San Francisco campus. Forms to be completed, placement tests to be scheduled, some remotely, some in person in the days just before the summer session began. He opened a file and started a list of tasks and dates and materials. A thorough physical and psychological evaluation which had to be done by a Starfleet physician. He wondered if Dad could do it. The fine print said no. Doctor th’Nar then.

“Luc,” Mom said softly with a three-fingered tap to his shoulder. He looked up. She was holding a plain silver box with a biometric lock on the front. “My personal effects box from my plebe year. If you want to use it.”

Luc scrolled to the relevant page. Personal effects were limited to what could be stored in a 30 cm by 30 cm by 20 cm fire-resistant box. He wasn’t supposed to bring his own clothes or even his own datapad, but he could fill the box with anything that wasn’t on a long list of contraband and keep it in the barracks. He was already making the list in the back of his mind. A metronome, aquamarine yarn and a crochet hook. Gaming dice. Gridded journal and pens. Four pairs of his favorite brand of socks—cadets wore boots, so they shouldn’t be visible under his uniform. Coconut oil for his knees and elbows. A high-quality nonelectronic magnifying glass. He could see everything fitting into the box, turn it around in his mind and he was just reaching the point at which he wondered whether it would be getting full.

“Luc?”

He blinked. “I was packing.”

“I thought so.” She walked over to the apparatus and squinted through the eyepiece of his microscope. “That looks fantastic. What’s the fractal dimension? Two-point six?”

“Almost two point seven.”

“Think you’re ready to report your results?”

Luc considered. “If I can control the cooling more precisely and adjust the solvent ratio I think we can get two point seven two.”

“You and Cori submit a proposal tomorrow and remember that changing your solvent mix means updating the safety protocol. I do not want to be scrubbing you two off the walls.”

“I am always safe,” Luc protested.

“Yeah, well you keep Cori in line, okay kiddo?”

Luc nodded seriously, even though he was more than half sure she was joking. He watched her leave. There was an anxious thread singing under his joy, the knowledge he would be leaving the Starbase that had been home for eight years and the people who he knew and who knew him. It was more agitating somehow that the move wouldn’t happen for several weeks. His thoughts would be half still here finishing the work he had started, and half dwelling on the Academy. “Cori, I’m going for a run,” he said, hopped out of his chair, and jogged until he got to the track, dodging officers and civilians scientists all the way. His feet hit the floor in a metronome rhythm and his thoughts settled into order with the beats.

*

The terminal in Jim’s quarters chimed. Should have headed to bed half an hour ago, he thought. 

“It is twenty-three thirty-one. Whoever it is can wait. If it were an emergency, we would be informed by the bridge,” Spock said reasonably, though he arrested his undressing at his undershirt. Jim, already shirtless, leaned in to steal a kiss, still half distracted by the sound.

The chiming stopped, then resumed a couple of minutes later, accompanied by a communications override from the bridge. The ensign on Gamma shift’s apologetic voice filtered into the room. “Captain Kirk, there’s an urgent real-time communication for you from Admiral Joyce at Starfleet Academy.”

“Did you inform him that it’s,” he paused to check his chrono, “twenty-three thirty-four ship time?”

“I did, sir. He said the schedule you put your ship on wasn’t his concern.”

Kirk sighed. The Enterprise was, like all Starfleet ships in Earth’s fleet, set to Universal Standard Time. “Can you stall him for fifteen minutes?” 

“I can probably give you five,” Ensign sh’Chari said. “He’s already unhappy that you didn’t respond to his direct message.”

“Right. Give me five then.”

Spock tossed him his shirt, which he flung on, not bothering with pulling his uniform pants back on over his boxers. He held out a hand and a comb was pressed into it. A mere ninety seconds later, the chime on his console went off again. “I can tell I’m going to love working with this guy,” Jim grumbled at Spock, then sat down and flipped on the screen, years of practice allowing him to shift gears from “squeeze out a little romantic time with the husband” to “impromptu night meeting with the new boss.”

“—because I’m expected to let you experiment with my cadets doesn’t mean you can ignore me. Do not forget that I outrank you.” Clearly, he’d started talking even before the sound cut in.

Jim found himself having second thoughts about this assignment. Still, he put on his most diplomatic expression and said, “I am sorry for inconveniencing you, Admiral. You called during my sleep cycle.”

“A Starfleet captain should be able to respond to a situation at a moment’s notice, any time, day or night.”

And what was the proper response to a puffed-up Admiral interrupting a captain’s sleep cycle for no better reason than because he could? Instead, Jim said, “May I ask to what I owe the pleasure of your call?” Oh, too sarcastic. He put his diplomacy smile back on his face.

“Comsol and Maina seem to think you’re going to sweep in here and turn this Academy into Caltech. I need to know I can count on you to prioritize making Starfleet officers out of these kids.”

For this, he was dragged out of bed? “Trust me, Admiral, the last thing I want is to go into space with underprepared officers. What we are looking at right now is making changes that will get nonhuman students through the program. You’re hemorrhaging the very cadets we need the most, kids from the newest Federation worlds, brilliant cadets with unusual ways of processing information, most of the espers.”

“And that’s what, half a dozen cadets?”

Spock, who had been listening in, set a cup of herbal tea beside Jim on the desk, then crouched so that his face was visible on the Admiral’s screen. “Depending on one’s definition, of course, the average number is seventy-eight per year, of which on average sixteen graduate.”

“You’re out of uniform,” Joyce spluttered. “And I don’t see why we need to make major changes to accommodate the metaphysical beliefs of a few Federation members.”

Spock extricated himself from the conversation. “If you will excuse me, Captain, the significant physical and psychological consequences of my metaphysical beliefs require my attention.”

Spock’s pointed comment sailed straight over Joyce’s head. “I expect you to submit your suggestions to me in writing by the first of May. I intend to schedule meetings with you at minimum twice per week until you arrive in San Francisco.”

“My yeoman knows my habits. Please schedule in advance with her and I will be sure to be more prepared. Now, unless you have anything further for me, my shift begins in six hours.”

“Wouldn’t want you to miss your beauty sleep,” Joyce sneered. “By our next meeting, I want to see the rough schedule for plebe summer, with any major changes from last year's schedule highlighted and justified.”

“Of course, sir,” Jim said, still wearing his plastic smile.

“Good afternoon. Joyce out.” The connection broke.

Jim scowled at the blank screen. “Well, I’m not going to be able to fall asleep anytime soon.”

“I believe the admiral is pushing the timeline in order to reduce the number of changes we are able to make to the curriculum.”

“I thought you were going to go meditate.”

“It can wait. Come to bed. I wish to help you relax so you can sleep.”

“Planning to get a little metaphysical?”

“I was hoping to engage in more physical pursuits, if of an abbreviated nature given the lateness of the hour.” His voice dropped in pitch, subtly, but enough to ignite a spark in Jim’s belly.

“I’ll have an extra coffee in the morning,” Jim decided. He aimed his uniform shirt at the ‘fresher and almost didn’t miss.

Spock collected the shirt, placed it neatly in the ‘fresher, and efficiently removed his own. “Bed, Jim,” he said.

“That an order, mister?”

The raised eyebrow Spock favored him with before descending upon him was answer enough.

*

“You know these miniskirts are damn silly,” Margaret remarked while peeling herself out of hers. They had been fun for about a week, swishing around her hips, showing off her legs all day for Leonard. She’d found herself dropping an awful lot of things that first week just so she could bend over to pick them up.

“They’re going back to a more unisex design, I hear,” Christine said while tugging on her workout pants. “I mean, we can wear the uniform with pants if we want to, it’s just you know, as long as I’m not going to romp around on some alien planet I’d rather feel pretty.”

Margaret finished changing, collected a towel from the stack by the door, and followed Christine to the track. They settled into an easy jog to warm up, slow enough they could keep chatting for a while. “You’d think after spending all this time with doctors, and draftee doctors besides, I’d be used to the regular flaunting of regulations and just general laxity, but this place is still hard to get used to.”

“Captain Kirk runs a tight ship,” Christine protested.

“The whole of this Starfleet is just—I don’t know. I guess I’m just not used to not saluting. Or clothes intended to look pretty.”

“The language of discipline has changed a bit in three hundred years, I’d say.” Christine turned toward the mats in the center of the gym to begin stretching. Margaret followed. “We still have to know our jobs and this ship backwards and forwards, obey orders, and give our best efforts to Starfleet and each other. Isn’t that enough?”

Margaret frowned. “Maybe.”

Christine snorted. “You’ll never admit when I’m right, will you? I saw the regimen you wrote up for yourself. You sure you need to go that hard that fast?”

“I’m in good enough shape to handle it,” Margaret said. “I just want to make sure I can hold my own against a bunch of eighteen-year-olds.”

“I know you well enough to know you’re not planning to hold your own. You’re planning to hand them their asses on a platter.”

“I wish. I can work out all I want, it’s not going to change the fact that I’m not a kid anymore. Too bad you can’t just stop people from aging.”

Christine slowed to a stop near the mats. “There have been attempts. They didn’t go well.”

“Len said something about that. One of the other G-A displacements, almost the whole population died because of some anti-aging virus?” Margaret collected a couple of yoga mats, handing one to Christine, and they took places near each other.

“Dr. McCoy caught it from some kids along with everyone else who went planetside. If he hadn’t come up with a cure we’d have lost all of them.”

“Len tells me you had something to do with that.” It still astounded her the skills Christine had been expected to master. In some ways, her education was even broader than Len’s.

Christine shrugged. “Maybe a little.”

Margaret got down on the mat and began her push-ups, counting as she went. “Care to join me?” she asked.

“I’m not such a glutton for punishment.” Margaret could hear Christine’s feet on the mat behind her but could see what she was up to until she finished her pushups and rolled onto her back to start sit ups. Christine was working through a series of elegant, but brisk movements that reminded her of moves she’d seen recovering Korean soldiers making as they tested their range of motion.

After Margaret finished a few circuits on the weight machines and Christine moved through martial arts forms for a while they came back to the mat. Christine had decided Margaret needed to learn yoga “for her mental health” and had been teaching her poses for a few weeks. The poses were harder than they looked and Christine had a maddening ability to chat right through them.

“I gotta hand it to you though, Margaret, Leonard’s been almost pleasant since you turned up. Getting laid regularly agrees with him,” while perched on her hands in bakasana as though it were nothing.

Margaret’s snort of laughter caused her to tumble into a heap on the mat. “Christine!”

The door to the gym slid open, admitting Len in workout shorts and one of his short-sleeved scrub tops. “Speak of the devil,” Christine chuckled, moving into a murderous upside-down pose. 

Margaret was glad of the sudden excuse to put yoga on hold. She started for Len at a bouncing almost-jog. He shouted in their direction, “Ladies, by all means, don’t let me interrupt your workout.”

“What, so you can ogle us?” Margaret snipped.

“I’d like to ogle one of you,” Len admitted cheerfully, which earned him a slap on the arm. “We just got our orders. I thought you’d like to know.”

“Do I really?” The end of the mission loomed only a few short months away and Len hadn’t proposed. He seemed serious, he talked about the future sometimes, though their plans always had to take the whims of Starfleet into account. She wasn’t looking forward to what might be a years-long separation from what she had to admit was the first truly decent man she’d managed to hold on to.

“I think you might. Jim, Spock and I are going to be overhauling Starfleet Academy.” He raised his voice. “We’d love for you to join us, Christine.”

“I’ll be seeing enough of you as it is,” Christine replied in a voice that might have been resigned, or might just have been the result of her having her chin squished into her chest and her feet up in the air.

Leonard grinned. “So you’ve decided on going for the DNP? That’s wonderful! I’ll be sure to harass you regularly while we’re dirtside.”

“I’ll be sure to reference you in all my papers.”

Margaret waited for the two of them to stop fooling around and said, more seriously, “So what does that mean for us? Will I be in your direct chain of command?”

Len paused for a moment to consider, his eyes tracking to a spot over her left shoulder. “We’ll need to sign paperwork and apply for a dispensation. It would be easier if—” he glanced at Christine and put an arm around Margaret’s shoulders to encourage her to walk away. “Somewhere more private, I think?”

“All right, all right,” she agreed, letting him drag her along with him.

He took her hands in his, rubbing over the backs with his thumbs. “So, I was thinking, I don’t have the best track record with relationships, but—”

She squeezed his hands and brought them to her lips to kiss the knuckles. “Stop right there, Dr. McCoy. If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking I demand the chance to shower and change. I’m a mess.”

He grinned. “I hope that says something about your answer. Well, I suppose I could meet you on the observation deck in an hour. It’s sorta traditional.”

She raised both eyebrows. “Well, I certainly wouldn’t want to mess with tradition.” 


	4. Proposals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leonard and Margaret make an official announcement on the observation deck, Spock and Jim start working on solutions to some of the problems at the Academy, and the next OC on the list has a really bad day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All temperatures are reported in Celsius.

Spock sat at the ready room table, working through his share of the week’s accumulated reports while Jim sat beside him with his boots kicked off and his crossed legs resting in his bondmate’s lap, working through his own list. The door chime sounded.

“Come,” Jim said, shifting position to something a little more professional.

Sulu poked a head in the door. “Your presence is requested on the observation deck in forty minutes.”

“By whom?”

“Chapel and Houlihan.”

“Both of them?”

“Pair of nurses beats a captain,” Sulu joked. “Seriously, if you’re not busy, I think it would be a good idea for you to get up there.”

Jim set down his datapad. “Spock, what do you think? Shall we indulge the ladies?”

“I have found it is unwise to ignore the reasonable requests of members of the crew. Mr. Sulu, do you have any information on the purpose of this gathering?”

“Not that I’m at liberty to divulge, sir,” Sulu said cryptically, then closed the door.

“Well, count me intrigued,” Jim said.

Spock placed his datapad beside Jim’s. “I calculate a sixty-two percent chance that the matter concerns a change in relationship status between Dr. McCoy and Nurse Houlihan.”

“So soon?”

“It has been four months, Captain.”

“It has, hasn’t it. Time is running away with me.” Before long they’d be back dirtside. Everything would be changing and he wasn’t sure how he was going to manage without his ship.

“You sound pensive,” Spock observed.

Jim sighed and stood, offering a hand to Spock. “I could use a little welcome change, I think. Shall we?”

*

Uhura, Sulu, and Christine were already on the observation deck, pretending nonchalance. Sulu had a spray bottle in one hand and was misting the plants very slowly and very thoroughly. Jim stood in front of one of the large windows to look out at the streaking stars. From his vantage point, he could see the rest of the observation deck reflected in the glass. Spock took his place at Jim’s side, mirroring his posture. Margaret arrived before Bones, wearing a peach gown and with her hair down and decorated with a glittery headband. Ordinary off duty wear, Jim thought wryly.

She took a seat on a narrow couch facing the stars, but only looked out at them for a moment before resolutely turning toward the planter at her side and pretending to be deeply interested in a large red flower. The door slid open again to admit Bones, who stopped in the doorway to survey the number of people who had just happened to choose this moment to be there.

His face crumpled for a second, and his mouth opened, but Margaret turned toward him and her face lit up so that her eyes crinkled and he stopped and snapped his mouth shut. She stood to meet him, peach dress flowing out behind her and warp magnified starlight shining on her hair.

“I see we have an audience,” he groused.

Margaret shrugged. “Word travels fast on a starship. Or so I hear.”

“You might as well all stop pretending to be here by accident,” Bones said. Jim turned away from the window to watch the two of them instead of their reflections. Bones glanced at the window and were his lips going just a little pale? “Proposing by the light of the stars is supposed to be romantic. Not sure I agree when they’re moving.”

Margaret giggled. “I’ve been staring at the potted plants since I got here.”

Bones led Margaret to the couch and arranged her there. “Just keep your eyes on me.”

Beside him, Spock muttered, “Computer, opaque windows. Lights to 30%.”

Bones didn’t acknowledge the gesture, but his shoulders relaxed a little and his fingers stopped twitching at his sides. “Now give me a minute, here. Takes a while for an old man to get down on one knee.”

“Old man! How old are you, forty-three?”

“Hey, I don’t go broadcasting your age in front of God and everybody!”

“And you won’t if you want to stay alive.” 

Bones had settled onto one knee and was fishing in the pocket of a jacket Jim hadn’t known he owned. “Promise you won’t ask me how I got ahold of this so fast,” Bones said. His eyes flicked for a fraction of a second toward Christine, who nodded, though her smile was a little sad. He opened the box. “It’s a blue star sapphire, not a diamond—diamonds went out of fashion a couple centuries ago. But I hope you’ll see your way clear to marrying me anyway.”

Margaret let him put the ring on her finger. “It’s beautiful.”

“Blue as your eyes,” he said.

She caught Spock’s eye. “You can’t have this one for radio parts,” she told him mischievously.

Bones chuckled. “Is that a yes, then?”

“Yes, of course! Of course I’ll marry you, you big dummy!” She threw her arms around him and planted kisses across his face.

Jim crossed the room to stand next to Christine. Tears swam in her eyes and her knuckles were pressed to her teeth, but she was smiling. “That’s your ring, isn’t it?” he whispered.

She nodded. “Couldn’t go for a better cause.”

Bones raised his voice. “Now all of you can quit rubbernecking and get back to work!” She scooped Margaret into his arms and headed for the doorway. “Sooner we get out of here the better.”

Jim chuckled. “You heard the man. Break’s over. Back to work, everyone.”

The rest of the gathered witnesses scattered. Spock took his place at Jim’s right elbow. “It is to be hoped that Ms. Houlihan will be able to adjust to our world.”

“You mean before she ends up in mandatory counseling?”

“She operates under ingrained social scripts which will be difficult to reconcile with Earth norms.”

“Like a lot of our cadets, I expect,” Jim reminded him. “I’m optimistic. She’s made a lot of progress in the last few months. Heck, she doesn’t even look askance at the two of us anymore.”

“I could justify an argument that she has moved past some forms of prejudice more quickly than Dr. McCoy.”

Jim choked on a laugh. “Don’t let him hear you say that.”

*

Scientific puzzles differed from the puzzles of human nature. If Spock did not understand a phenomenon encountered on their travels, he could collect data, conduct experiments, and analyze the results until an answer emerged. Humanoid social systems were orders of magnitude more complex than nebulae. How did one reliably indoctrinate intelligent, ambitious young people into a chain of command that was so different from what they experienced on individualist Earth? How could one reward striving for their personal best while avoiding the kind of destructive competitiveness and ambition that undermined Starfleet’s purpose?

“You look troubled, Spock,” Jim said from behind him.

“I have just received the final list of candidates accepted into the Academy this year. The algorithm I have applied identifies fifty-eight students at the highest risk, though additional students will inevitably be identified after their physicals and psych evals are complete. I find it easier to identify the problems to be solved than the solutions.”

“All right. Shoot.” Jim turned his chair around and straddled it.

Spock summarized, “We already know that cadets who could contribute greatly to Starfleet are unable to complete the program as it exists. We also know from hard experience that the Academy has been graduating cadets whose values are at odds with the values Starfleet claims to uphold. When I encounter an individual new crewmember in need of mentoring, I am often able to determine an effective course of action. Yet when I consider cadets as a group, I am uncertain what changes might be most effective.”

“So let’s start with the students who will need the most accommodating. How many nonhumanoids are on that list?”

“Only two. Dahai Naraht, the Horta candidate I sponsored in accordance with the terms of the Janus IV treaty, and Nkaan Ptet’tik, who is Pluran.”

“Pluran…insectoid?”

“They resemble centipedes with scorpion claws. For her, the most significant issues will be devices designed to be operated by human hands and light levels on campus. Plurans are accustomed to much dimmer surroundings than humans. In addition, they thrive on physical contact, tending to spend the bulk of their time in close physical contact with other members of their species.”

“So we’re going to have to place her with people who are willing to cuddle a giant centipede.”

“Ideally, yes.”

“Right. Okay then. And how are we going to accommodate Naraht? We can’t have him crushing staircases everywhere he goes. I’m also pretty sure he won’t fit through most of the doors on campus.”

“Naraht weighs 1800 kilograms. I have been discussing the matter with the superintendent. At present, the plan is to allow him to attend class virtually when he cannot attend in person.”

“That’s going to lead to lazy thinking on the part of the faculty. We need to prioritize moving his class sections into buildings he can enter. What other issues are we going to need to consider for him?”

“Horta live in natural surroundings utterly devoid of light. They have no true eyes and are obligate sonar users. In addition, their manipulating tentacles secrete small amounts of corrosive substances, as do their entire bodies. They are also unaccustomed to oxygen levels as high as found on Earth. Naraht’s outer carapace has been coated with Teflon to protect it from excess oxygen and a corrosion resistant datapad and vocoder have been designed for his use.”

“Do we need a safety plan? I mean, most cadets aren’t at high risk of accidentally dissolving their classmates.”

“I have been assured that Horta are in complete control of their travel and defensive secretions. However, it would be wisest for him to consume nourishment at some distance from the other cadets in order to prevent eye and lung irritation.”

“Let’s get Scotty on the problem. I don’t trust the current Academy staff to take all the possible issues into account, and the last thing we need is for a cadet to get hurt—or worse. How many class two humanoids do we have?”

“Only sixteen. I have already sent Arex a list of species to research. Lieutenant Uhura has the list of cadets from Federation protectorates and provisional members. She would like to have brought them all to campus two weeks before the summer session for cultural education, but it is too late for students with greater distances to travel to change their plans.”

“Making sure the cadets newest to the Federation know how they’re expected to behave is important, but I’d also like to get a handle on the amount of arrogance, xenophobia, and frankly antisocial behavior I’m seeing in some of the new graduates. I think we need to look at how we can use the squad system to promote unit cohesion.”

Spock considered Kirk’s suggestion. The captain, while he had his own issues to overcome, was charismatic, attractive, quick-witted, and human. He would have been at home in whatever social situation he encountered. “I did not find being the only nonhuman cadet in a squad of ten promoted my integration. I was always the token other.”

To his credit, the captain appeared to consider Spock’s experience thoughtfully. “And that’s got to be even more of a problem now. I know the current sorting algorithm separates the nonhuman cadets in order to ensure the human cadets were exposed to aliens.”

“Which was part of the problem, I believe. Nonhuman cadets were, and are I believe, being treated as a means to improve human cadets, rather than as valuable in their own right.”

Jim tapped his knuckle against his top lip, thinking. “What if we change the algorithm? Instead of scattering the high-risk cadets, what if we cluster them—group them up where we can for mutual support?”

“It might allow us to more effectively track those cadets, however, given that squad leaders are judged on the retention and performance of their squads, they could resent being given more challenging cadets.”

Jim waved away his concern. “Not if we let them know in advance and give them a chance to back out. So our last group of high-risk cadets—telepaths and other espers. What do our numbers look like there?”

“Fourteen, but very few cadets have Penrose scan results listed. It is likely those numbers will at least double after entrance physicals are complete. Clustering in groups of two to four within squads would likely benefit those cadets, especially if those with more training are grouped with those who have less.”

“Probably the best we can do for the time being. We’ll also have a medical watch put on all of them. I won’t have us preside over another death like they had in ‘64. Speaking of clustering, I do have an idea.”

“Do I detect mischief in your tone?”

“Maybe. Like I mentioned at the meeting, all five of us are sponsoring high-risk cadets spanning multiple categories. They’re also in different divisions; command, communications, medical, and two sciences. I’d like to put the five of them together, see how they do.”

“That would be sentimental of you. And it would expose those cadets to special treatment.”

“Isn’t that kind of the point? We’re not going to be able to avoid special treatment for the highest risk cadets, at least this first year. We have to learn how to cultivate them into successful Starfleet officers while keeping them in the game.”

“It is inevitable they will discover the connection among their sponsors.” 

“I think we’ll have to tell them something, probably before the term begins. You remember the barracks challenge?”

“I do. Are you considering reinstating it?”

“Yes, partly because I think it may solve the housing problem for Naraht, at least for the summer session. Though I have some ideas for how we can make it more interesting.”

“I am intrigued.”

*

Stardate 8069.8

From: Doctor Leonard H. McCoy  
To: Sofie K. Gnidziejko, BS-PMD, CMT-2

Subj: Starfleet Academy Commission

1\. I was glad to see that you were accepted into Starfleet Academy and have confirmed your appointment. I have no doubt you will make an excellent medical officer. Tom Schoenbein speaks quite highly of you, both as a paramedic and as a person.

2\. I have recently learned that I am to be assigned to Starfleet Academy Medical Division at the close of Enterprise’s five year mission. I have chosen to serve as your faculty advisor. Please feel free to contact me with any issues, problems, or questions you have as you begin your Starfleet career. I will keep in touch as the summer session approaches.

L.H.McCoy  
Lieutenant Commander Leonard H. McCoy, MD., Chief Medical Officer of USS Enterprise.

*

The message wasn’t nearly long enough to tax Sofie’s memory, so she had no good reason to have read it five times since it arrived this morning. There wasn’t much else to do, though. It was cold and windy and tourism was light this Spring Break. Boring, of course, was a word never to be spoken aloud during a shift, and even thinking it was tempting fate. The wood frame door to the equipment rental cabin opened with a squeal and the ringing of the bell attached to the frame. Sofie took her moon boot encased feet off the counter and sat up. Two men, bearded and in their forties, blew in on a gust of frigid air, stomping the snow from their boots.

“Close the door!” Levi yelled from down on the floor where he was unpacking a box of hand warmers.

The taller guy pushed the door closed. “We’re looking for cross country skis and a travois.”

Sofie greeted them. “You two heading up to the cabins by the falls?”

The two men stomped snow off their boots in near unison. The tall one answered for both. “That we are. It’s our tenth anniversary.”

“Well, congratulations to you both. I’ll sign you two out a travois for your luggage and Levi here will fit you for skis.” She hopped down off the stool, pulled open the back door, and pulled her goggles down against the brisk wind. It was only a dozen steps to the shed, but the light wind stung her cheeks and crept inside the sleeves of her coat to chill the centimeter of skin between her gloves and her sweater.

She waved her electronic key over the lock to release the travois, then pulled it around to the side door. “It’s minus twelve out here. You two sure you don’t want to take a flitter?”

“We’re from Alberta. This is warm.” The tall one joked. He had to be joking. 

Levi finished checking the fit on his skis and looked up at both of them. “Just be sure to keep your beacons on, just in case.”

“Will do, young man.” They tromped out of the cabin, shutting the door behind them. Sofie hopped over the counter and back onto her perch to play Marie Celeste IV on her datapad. 

The shorter of the guys from Alberta burst back in the door within seconds. “Skimmer just broke through the ice on the lake!”

Sofie was back up in an instant. “On it. Do not go out there on foot. We’ll take a flitter and hover.”

“I’m calling it in,” Levi said.

“I’ll get suited up. You two, do whatever Levi says—exactly what he says.” She grabbed her bag and stripped down to her thermals in the middle of the eight-degree cabin, suppressing a shiver while she pulled on the insulated wetsuit. Her clothes ended up on the floor in a graceless pile someone else could pick up. She stomped back into her boots, threw her parka and toque on over the wetsuit, and jumped into the flitter next to Levi.

Levi turned to her. “Backup’s meeting us there. Joe and Eric here volunteered to be muscle.” Tall was Joe, short was Eric. Levi took them into the air and maneuvered them toward the shrinking patch of color on the lake.

“Can they follow orders?” Sofie asked.

“We can, Missy,” Joe said, peering over her shoulder.

“It’s Sofie. Kakabeka Falls Search and Rescue.”

“Why are you sitting around in the rental cabin?” Joe asked.

“It’s Spring Break. The regulars bailed for someplace with positive temperatures and left the rest of us doing double duty,” she answered, most of her attention on the skimmer sinking into the ice-covered lake. It was as cold as midwinter this week, but last week there’d been an early spring thaw and the ice had thinned too much to bear the weight of vehicles. They came up on the bright yellow skimmer bobbing with one side just above the surface of the water. A body lay on its side, curled into a tight ball at the edge of the hole.

Sofie jumped up and pulled on a harness, kicked off her boots, and popped the hatch. “Eric, Joe, let out the cable but keep a little tension on it. I’ll clip the patient to me and bring them back to the flitter. Use the pulley to haul us back if the ice starts to break up, they’ll be wet and I’m not full human. We’ll be heavier than you expect.”

The short guy, Eric, who on closer examination was built like he threw trees around for fun, nodded briskly. “Got it.”

She dropped to the ice, letting the cable take most of her weight, and pulled the victim up to her chest, wrapping a carry harness around them and clipping it on. She tugged on the line and Joe and Eric kept it taut while she carefully walked over ice that crackled worryingly underfoot. Sofie took the fifteen seconds it took to get her into the flitter to lower her shields for a quick mental status assessment. The expected mix of terror, despair, and overwhelming cold washed over her, but she sensed none of the rhythm disturbances that would indicate a head injury. The woman was trying to speak through chattering teeth. Sofie caught the gist as disjointed images and shouted to Levi, “Daughter and granddaughter trapped in the vehicle. I’m going under as soon as backup arrives.”

Backup arrived just as she finished speaking. A wetsuited figure dropped out of the other flitter, Cade by the number on his chest. Sofie handed her charge off to Levi and Joe, then hit her comlink. “Cade, we’re at eleven minutes. Looking for two victims, one adult female, one juvenile female roughly three to five years of age.”

The vehicle bobbed on its side, buoyed by its surviving emergency float, but the passenger compartment was fully submerged. “Can we get a beam out?” Cade asked.

Levi answered, “Can’t get a lock. No active life signs and they’re underwater.”

Cade nodded. “Not dead till warm and dead.”

Sofie pulled on her rebreather and checked her line, then pulled open the upper door and slid into the vehicle’s back seat, the cold seeping through her gloves and burning the spare few centimeters of exposed skin at her wrists, ankles, and cheeks. Cade sprawled at the edge of the hole, holding onto her line. The little girl was floating, inert, in her harness. Sofie didn’t bother trying to unlatch it, just reached back and tore the straps out of the seat and pulled the body into her arms, lifeless as a doll. Not dead till warm and dead, she reminded herself, twisted the cable around her hand for leverage, and heaved herself back up out of the car, passing the child to Cade and dropping back down into the icy lake. 

The mother was still in the driver’s seat. She hit the quick release on the harness this time, but she couldn’t get the woman into the backseat. The front door was wedged under the ice, and the float was losing air, the vehicle drifting lower in the water. Sofie, smaller and slighter than the accident victim, squeezed into the front seat and tried the front door, but the electronics were fried and it wouldn’t move. Her feet might fit up against the door if she could get them between the controls and the woman’s lap. She wormed them in, pushed her head and hands up against the passenger side door, and kicked, hard.

She door squealed as the hinges failed, then it dropped away into the dark, followed by the woman. Sofie unclipped her line and shot into the dark water after her. She got one arm under the woman’s arms, hugged her to her chest, and hit the float controls on her suit. They popped to the surface, just under the ice. Cade’s shadow darkened the ice above and to her side. He knocked a warning then hit the ice with a blast from a phasing torch, then stepped back so Sofie could surface. He and another EMT pulled the woman out of her arms so she could climb back up onto the ice and into the flitter hovering a few inches above the ground. 

The first flitter had already spun off for the hospital with the little girl and the grandmother. They’d left a second driver so she and Levi could attend to their patient, who was already undressed and laid out on a portable biobed with Levi performing chest compressions. Sofie peeled out of the headpiece, shrugged off the rebreather and mini tank, and stripped off her gloves, her hands stiff and numb with cold. “What have we got?” she asked him.

“Asystole. No draw. Time?”

“Sixteen minutes. We should be at the hospital in four. Gimme room.” Cade sat back on his haunches for a moment. She planted a bare hand on the woman’s chest, closed her eyes, and tried to feel for any cardiac activity that might be encouraged into fibrillation. Nothing. “My hands are too cold.” When she pulled away, she left a greenish blue handprint.

“I’ll give stimulants and the neuro cocktail, you get that hand looked at.”

“It’s a rope burn, Cade, I’ll get it later.”

Cade rolled his eyes and puffed out between compressions, “Hey, Eric, bandage Miss Indestructible so she can give me a hand. Joe, I need you to hold the patient just like this so I can intubate.”

Eric, the tall one, sat down with bandages. “Thought you all had green blood and poker faces,” he remarked.

Sofie groaned. “Just hand me the disinfectant, I can wrap it myself.”

“There’s a time to be independent and there’s a time to let someone help you,” Eric replied blandly, turning her hand up in his. She concentrated on her breath and her shields and he was done in only a few seconds. “That ought to hold you until you get to the hospital.”

She snatched her hand back, then tried to soften the gesture with an apologetic smile. Cade had Joe bagging the patient while he kept up compressions. He sat back again for a second to check the scanner. “Still asystole. Try again?”

Sofie nodded and slid in beside him. Her fingers were turquoise and burning, but that meant blood flow was returning. She slid her palm and fingers flat against the patient’s cool chest. “Still nothing to work with. I’m giving another hit of Cordrazine.”

“Noted,” he agreed and started compressions again. She reloaded the hypospray and pressed it to the patient’s neck. 

There was a bump and the flitter settled into its dock in the emergency bay. Sofie pushed the biobed from the end while Cade took the side, but she stayed in the vehicle while he passed the information on to the hospital team. She’d pushed herself, hard, and the cold was catching up with her. She found herself doubled over in the back of the flitter, shaking violently. Eric tucked a warming blanket around her shoulders. The edge of the flitter bounced a little under his weight when he sat beside her. “Your hair’s frozen,” he said.

She reached up. Her curls crunched under her fingers. Eric helped her to stand on wobbly, shaking legs and walked her into the emergency room. She stopped him in the entryway. “Thanks. Both of you did good,” she told him.

“You think she’ll make it?”

Asystole and zero draw at twenty minutes in an adult? “No.” She chewed her lip, not wanting to leave Eric without hope. “The kid has a chance, though.”

“So where are you from anyway?”

“Chicago,” she deflected. “Go find your husband. I’ll be fine.” She resisted the urge to go and check on the patients. Cade was handling the transfer. The hospital discouraged Search and Rescue from interfering with patients once they were admitted. She sighed. One day she’d be the one with the MD after her name and when the time came she’d pay a little more attention to the lowly ambulance drivers. 

She thumbed her comlink. A face ringed in steel gray curls appeared in a few moments. “Sofie! You’re soaked! What happened?”

“Water rescue,” she said. “I just needed to see your face, Gramma.”

“Dragon won this one?”

“Yeah.” She sniffled. “Anyway, I’m freezing. I’m going to borrow the hospital shower, drink some peppermint tea, and read my email from my advisor at the Academy until I don’t feel like shit.”

“Sofie Katherine Gnidziejko!”

“Sorry, Gramma. Love you.”

“Love you, too, Evenstar.” Gramma broke the connection, probably knowing Sofie would stand there in the emergency room hallway until she did. Sofie slouched toward the showers, still shivering.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quick note: I changed the series name to The Not-So-Lost years so I could include some side stories set on Earthtoo that aren't part of the Academy plotline.


	5. Transitions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Walter O'Reilly and Ginger Bayliss are brought back to Earth on the Enterprise. Joyce has a frustrating encounter with Admiral Enwright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back Radar! I missed you, buddy.

Walter tossed his duffel bag into the truck and slid into the driver’s seat beside his Ma, then turned the key, popped the clutch, and backed down the long driveway. Ma felt a bit heavy beside him. “You all right, Ma?”

“Can’t see why we have to drive all the way into town when they could take you right off the porch with that transporter thing,” she said. 

“That’s not what’s bothering you.”

Ma fidgeted with her purse strap. “I’m going to miss you, son.”

They pulled onto the highway. “Aw, Ma. I’ll miss you too. I’ll write as often as I can, and send video messages. You still got that datapad, right?”

“Yes, Walt,” she said with the weariness of someone who had been asked that question too many times.

“You haven’t asked me if I’m sure about this yet.”

“I’m a McMann, and I’m your mother. And even if I weren’t either of those, the set of your shoulders and that smile in your eyes tells me you’re sure. And in a good way, this time.”

Walter let himself grin. “I’ll make you proud, Ma. I promise.”

“I’m already proud. I raised a good man with a good head on his shoulders. I’m just glad you’re running toward something this time instead of away.”

Walter drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. The role he and the rest of the 4077th played in the brief interstellar war and its resolution had been downplayed on the news, but enough people in Ottumwa knew enough to have opinions about it. The notoriety, for good or ill, made his skin itch like his clothes were too small and that alone would make him glad to leave Ottumwa behind.

“Penny for your thoughts?” His ma prompted after he’d been silent for too long.

“Not while I’m driving,” he replied absently.

She snorted and slapped him on the arm. “Not what I meant and you know it.”

He pushed up his glasses. “I mean, I might feel different, but that’s not what people here see. I’m still that tetched O’Reilly boy, but now I’m that tetched O’Reilly boy that saved the world. Or broke it. Mostly broke it. I think if I stay here too long I’ll shrink to fit what they want me to be.”

“I think you worry too much about your own intentions. What were you telling me just last night?”

“About what?”

“Oh I don’t know, you lost me somewhere around space band hopping or somesuch.”

“Oh! I was just sayin’ I’m getting a handle on all this math stuff. So, see, subspace radios are different from regular radios on account of there’s a lot of subspace out there for signals to go through, and not all of it’s the same size. So you hafta pick based on how much power you have and how fast you need to get the message where it’s going. There’s a buncha math you gotta do, but the tutorial programs on my datapad make a lot more sense than the teachers at the high school ever did.”

Ma wasn’t quite listening, but he could feel her smiling without taking his eyes off the road. She let him ramble most of the way into Ottumwa before she took advantage of his taking a breath to get a word in. “See, now, you get all excited when you talk about those fancy radios.”

“I like ‘em.” He had to be quiet a minute to remember which way to turn to get to the little Army recruitment center where his official transfer papers were and where he was supposed to meet Lieutenant Uhura. Once he was sure he was going the right way, he added, “But I like going places and meeting people too. And Starfleet isn’t just about fighting wars. It isn’t even mostly about fighting wars.”

Ma sighed impatiently. “Walter, you don’t have to convince me this is the right thing for you. You’re a grown man and can make a grown man’s decisions.”

They pulled into the parking lot of the same recruitment center he’d driven to when he was seventeen. Walter got out of the truck, grabbed his duffel back out of the back, and waited at the front of the truck for Ma to meet him and squeeze him into a breathless hug. “Study hard and be safe,” she said.

“I will, Ma. Love you, Ma.”

“Love you too, Walt.” She finally let go and got into the truck. 

He watched, waving, until it disappeared around the corner, then took the steps two at a time to the door of the Army recruitment office, where Ginger Bayliss was already waiting in her dress browns. “Ginger!” he shouted, then felt his cheeks heat with his mistake. “I mean, Lieutenant Bayliss, Ma’am,” he said belatedly, adding a salute for good measure.

“We’re going to have to unlearn that tradition pretty quick, Corporal,” the nurse noted amiably. “So, Bones manage to convince you to switch to medical?”

“I ain’t cut out to be a doctor and, I mean, nurses are women.”

“Not where we’re going,” Ginger corrected him. 

He knew that in his head. Rafe Issa had been his nurse some of the time up on Enterprise, but his gut just couldn’t see it. Not for himself, anyway. “I ‘spose I might cross-train as a medtech,” he allowed. “But I ain’t gonna be no nurse!”

On the landing below them, the air took on a glassy shimmer, then gold sparkles resolved into Lieutenant Uhura’s form. The streets were sparsely occupied this early, but what people were on the street turned to stare at the dark-skinned young woman in the bright red minidress.

Lieutenant Uhura climbed the last flight up to where Walter and Lieutenant Bayliss stood. Walter tugged briefly at his sleeves, still not sure what to do with his hands since saluting wasn’t a thing they did in Starfleet. He raised his hand in a _ta’al_ as the least objectionable alternative.

The communications officer broke into a delighted smile and returned the gesture, then accepted Bayliss’ handshake. “Good to meet you, Lieutenant Bayliss. Major Houlihan has nothing but good things to say about you.”

“And are she and McCoy still together?”

“Very much so. As long as they keep arguing, it will be a match made in heaven.” She turned to Walter. “I’m so happy to see you again, Radar. What have you been up to?”

“Studying, mostly. Learning languages is a lot harder than learning codes.”

“It’s certainly different. We’ve got a few weeks left before we get to Earth—I’ll give you some pointers and you can practice your Vulcan on Mr. Spock. I understand you both have to sign the transfer papers in front of a notary. Shall we head inside?”

Walter caught the door for the lieutenants. On impulse, he turned to look out the glass storefront at the sunlight dappled steps. It would be the last time he would set foot on his homeworld for at least a year. He tugged his jacket straight, closed the door, and followed the ladies into his future.

*

If it weren’t for the glittering foil mirrors sprinkled through the planet’s orbit and the huge, white ice caps, the planet they orbited could easily be mistaken for Earth. The sinuous curve of North and South America lay beneath them, green and brown against the deep blue oceans. The comm chimed. Scotty’s voice filled the bridge. “Lieutenant Chekov is ready to head down to the planet. You wanted to see him off?”

Jim, the Captain, Spock amended as they were on duty, replied, “Thank you, Mr. Scott. Spock, with me. Sulu, you have the bridge.”

“Aye, Captain.”

Spock caught up to him as they entered the turbolift. “Privilege of rank?” he asked.

“Sulu lost the coin toss.” There was an extra twinkle in the captain’s eye and a wash of mischief in his mood, though.

Spock turned to the Captain. “I am gratified that Chekov’s promotion came through expeditiously. Are you certain he will have sufficient security? The Soviet states are not precisely stable at the moment.”

“He’ll be joining a full diplomatic team. Our people and theirs.”

Spock was aware of the security precautions, but he was also quite aware that Earthtoo’s Russia had been suddenly and forcibly ejected from one of the bloodiest eras in its history, and Chekov’s relationship with the heir apparent put an attractive target on the new-minted Lieutenant’s back, Organian enforced proscription of violence notwithstanding. The situation was largely beyond his control, however, so he merely nodded acknowledgment.

They arrived in the transporter room to find Chekov lounging against the transporter console, pretending nonchalance. He held a stuffed black bear and a clear plastic box full of train tracks and cars. He straightened as soon as Jim and Spock entered. “I am glad to see you before I go, Captain, Mr. Spock,” he said, and was his accent a little thicker than usual? Perhaps.

“I am certain you will perform your new duties in exemplary fashion,” Spock told him.

“Thank you, sir.”

Jim gestured to his packages. “Gifts?”

“For Iosif and Katya.” Alliluyeva’s children from prior marriages, Spock recalled.

Jim nodded his approval. “Good choices. You have matured so much since you came to us. This Russia will be lucky to have you.”

“Thank you, sir. They are waiting for me.”

“Of course.” 

Chekov stepped onto the pad and Scott sent him on his way, then turned to Jim and Spock. “Lieutenant Uhura is finished with the paperwork dirtside and is ready to beam up.”

“Perfect.” Jim opened a comlink to the bridge. “Mr. Sulu, put us over the North American continent.”

“Aye, Captain.” The adjustment took only a few moments, then Scott called down to the planet’s surface. “Uhura, do you have our passengers?”

“I do, Scotty. Bring us up.”

Uhura took shape on the transporter, flanked by two increasingly familiar silhouettes that solidified into Ginger Bayliss and Radar O’Reilly. Bayliss stood on the transporter pad, perfectly still as though she wasn’t sure she would disappear if she moved. “It’s okay, you can get down now,” Radar said quietly. He caught Spock’s eye and his face broke into a grin.

“Welcome aboard, Lieutenant Bayliss, Corporal O’Reilly. I believe your Army ranks will hold until we arrive on Earth. I’ve arranged single rooms for both of you on Deck Four.”

Bayliss took the steps carefully to stop in front of Jim. “You look good,” she said.

“I ought to after all the PT you put me through.” He opened his arms in invitation and she leaned in for a chaste, but firm hug. “I see you’ve got your strength back,” she said. “Is the Major around?”

“She’s in Sickbay. Shall we?” He held out an arm chivalrously, playing his part to the hilt, but winked at Spock on the way out the door.

“Ham,” Uhura noted.

Spock inclined his head slightly in agreement. “Indeed. Lieutenant Bayliss was instrumental in aiding the Captain’s recovery. She expressed an interest in Starfleet and intends to enter the physical therapy program.”

O’Reilly stepped off the platform with Uhura beside him. He looked like he had put back some of the weight he had lost, and the dark circles were gone from under his eyes. Even without making an effort to perceive it, he could tell the young man had been practicing the shielding techniques he had managed to impart during his stay. “Who’s Ginger’s sponsor?” O’Reilly asked.

Spock considered. “I believe Margaret Houlihan convinced Christine Chapel to do the honors. May I assume your studies are going well?”

O’Reilly shrugged. “Math is a lot easier than I thought it would be, but I’m still getting hung up on languages.”

“Which languages have you selected to supplement Standard?”

“Standard Vulcan, Andorian, and Klingon. Klingon’s not too bad. Andorian’s kind of confusing. I’m having the most trouble with Vulcan, though.”

“There remain several weeks until we arrive on Earth. I am available if you wish to practice the language or ask questions.” He had hoped to have time to discuss the cultural differences O’Reilly would encounter on twenty-third century Earth. Language studies would give them a reason to meet regularly.

“Thanks, sir,” O’Reilly replied with an enthusiasm he had only rarely seen. 

“And we can work on Andorian and Klingon,” Uhura added. “I need to get back to my post, but I’ll catch you in the mess at 1830.” She left them in the transporter room.

“I’m not going to catch a break at all,” O’Reilly complained, but he was smiling under the pout.

“Your quarters are on Deck Four. I will direct you there if you wish.”

“I think I can find them okay,” O’Reilly said, “But if you want to walk me there I’d like that.”

“Very well. Has Uhura informed you that we will be joining you at Starfleet Academy this summer? The Enterprise will be in drydock for a major refit and we have been given supervisory positions at the Academy.”

“Bet that’ll be different.”

Spock raised an eyebrow. “Indeed it will.”

*

Admiral Joyce enjoyed taking his runs on the main practice track at six in the morning, as he had for decades, his gray running pants and sweatshirt nearly identical to those of the cadets running in tight double lines of five or sometimes four, their cropped or tied back hair glittering with drops of morning dew. By early Spring, the chaff had been weeded out and almost all of the remaining cadets were in prime condition, the struggles of the previous summer replaced with confidence and precision.

He took a right turn onto the cross country track this morning. First years would be at the firing range in a few minutes, and a batch of second years had reserved the obstacle course. Forty degrees was cold enough for him to have tugged on a stocking cap, but as the sun rose on a sky for once periwinkle and cloudless, he decided to indulge himself, stopping to watch the first years line up to aim their phasers, set to tracer fire, at targets that danced around the practice field.

The instructor blew a whistle and the cadets divided into four teams. “Cadets, training phasers to level two. Two minutes to find cover. Fall out!”

She strode over to the edge of the field to stand beside Joyce, watching the teams take their places behind plascrete walls and hay bales. “They’re still too slow,” she said.

“Still all trying to lead all the time, Pauley,” he noted. “Usually takes until the middle of the second year to shake out the real command material and get the rest to learn how to follow.”

“Maybe. Still too slow.” She blew the whistle. Shots flashed out almost immediately, not hitting anything but giving away the shooters’ position. 

Joyce rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “You know if you’re keeping your job yet?” he asked.

“We all have to interview remotely. My fate is in the hands of a Lieutenant Commander Sulu.”

“It’s ridiculous. I’m beginning to wonder if Bob Comsol wants to lose the Academy to Argelius.”

“They’re right about Earth not holding up its end of the deal.”

“It’s not our fault that humans are better at this kind of work. It’s common knowledge that Andorians and Tellarites are too belligerent to be team players, and the Vulcans are happier—excuse me, I mean more efficient—on single species ships anyway.”

“And the other thirty or so species?” Pauley asked, a bit more pointedly than he’d expected.

“Some of them do fine and are a credit to the ‘fleet. But we can’t spend precious energy babysitting the ones that don’t the next time there’s a war.”

A cadet skidded past them on her back, shooting at the ankles of an opponent, then twitched as her body lit up with a light stun charge, just enough to sting. She lay back the rest of the way, folding her arms across her chest and crossing her legs at the ankle, “dead.”

Pauley sighed. “At least our new lords and masters have seen combat.” She took a few moments to watch her charges more closely, then added, “And they’ve managed to avoid combat more often than should be possible.”

“Been reading up?” Joyce asked.

“Haven’t you?”

“It makes for entertaining reading, that’s for sure.” He gestured to a cluster of shots and a pile of “dead” cadets.

Kirk’s record was an uneven mix of unorthodox and exemplary. The only truly consistent feature was a tendency to insubordination Joyce planned to rein in immediately. Too much change too fast was Kirk’s MO, and Joyce wasn’t about to let the situation spin out of control. Perhaps the man’s XO could be convinced to be of some help in that regard. Kirk’s command style had to be maddening to a Vulcan, and the fact that the two were married in some sort of politically necessitated ritual ought to mean that Spock would have Kirk’s ear even more than most first officers.

Pauley waded out into the fray, blowing her whistle, and Joyce jogged on, hoping for a chance to catch the cadets running the confidence course. He could hear them before he could see them, the grunts of effort, the splashing into the water hazards, the curses converted at the last second into less objectionable shouts. 

It was no secret that the confidence course was a perennial favorite of almost every cadet. The fourth-year supervising with his timer was shouting encouragements and insults at cadets as they swarmed up and over walls and down knotted rope nets. The second and third-year engineering cadets designed variations to the five courses a couple of times a year to keep things fresh. He wasn’t familiar with the particular fourth year running this session and didn’t want to distract him—there were disadvantages to rank at times—so he watched from a discreet distance.

He didn’t hear the footsteps behind him until the man spoke next to his ear. “You need to work on your situational awareness, Joyce.”

“Admiral Enwright, what brings you out here so early?” He kept his address neutral and pleasant.

“I have the preliminary list of cadets to flag for special service.”

“I assume they’re all human this year? I’d like to keep the numbers up.”

“For the most part.”

The list was handwritten on paper, rather than in a data file. Enwright flicked the folded half-sheet open and counted first, then read through the list of names. “Fourteen. Enwright, you’re asking for trouble. Two of these cadets were sponsored by our new bosses. I doubt they’ll be happy to have them poached by your division.”

“Who’s poaching anyone. I am merely providing cadets who are unable to complete Academy training a means to provide service to the Federation. I expect detailed reports on all fourteen cadets on this list. I’ll give you my final selections before the wilderness challenge. Good day.” Enwright jogged away.

The man was infuriating. Every year he brought a list of cadets to watch, and every year four or five or six of those cadets disappeared into the black hole of his organization, usually immediately after an untimely discharge. He didn’t dare get Kirk involved directly, though the Enterprise crew were said to be extremely protective of their own. If Enwright went after either of those two cadets, Kirk just might bring him down.

If he had a chance to watch that go down it would almost be worth putting up with the maverick starship captain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are a beautiful thing. What do you think Enwright is up to?


	6. Endings and Beginnings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Paden Barrie is introduced, and the Enterprise bridge crew leave their old home behind for a new one.

The monthly transport from Deneva to the Sol system wasn’t fancy enough to have an observation deck, but there was a horizontal band of narrow windows running along the outer wall of the mess. Paden Barrie stood in front of one of those windows, a half-forgotten grilled cheese sandwich in one hand, watching the stars streak past.

“Why do they do that?” they asked the girl standing next to them.

“We’re at warp.”

“Yes, I know that,” they snipped. “What I mean is why does the ship put up this simulated image instead of just blacking out the view?”

She waved a hand dismissively. “Something something psychology. It’s bad for people not to have windows, apparently.” She sipped her drink.

Another young woman, her companion at the table, corrected her. “The view is computer enhanced, not fake. A good helmsman or engineer can see changes in the structure of space or the function of the engines based on the color and shape of the streaks. It’s just that the unenhanced view makes most people sick.”

Paden shrugged their response. Every one of those still slightly nauseating streaks was one more sign of the growing distance between them and Deneva. They forcibly turned their thoughts to making a study list. They planned, as much as possible, never to think of Deneva again and a solid career in Starfleet ought to keep them away for several years at least. Placement testing would be during I-week. They should read over the standard controls for small vessels, safety rules and basic flight instructions. They were confident enough in math and general science—maybe write another couple of timed essays just for practice? They turned away from the window. “Is there a gym I can use?” they asked.

“Deck three,” the girl beside them said. “Follow the signs.”

‘Follow the signs,’ they repeated to themself in an only slightly exaggerated imitation of her prissy voice. They did, however, take the lift to deck three and follow the convenient markings leading to the gym, which was occupied by about a dozen people using the treadmills, infinite lap pool, and weights. They ducked into the locker room to find they were not alone. A couple of guys were chatting and changing, their impressive physiques on display. There was no way in the galaxy Paden was taking off their shirt with people around.

They ducked into a private stall, tugged open their duffel bag, and pulled out loose, lightweight gym clothes. No swimming for them. There would be awkward questions or worse, knowing and pitying looks. Once they were dressed, they made for a treadmill to warm up. Their physical fitness would be tested as soon as they arrived and then a few weeks later, but the test that counted would come at the end of plebe summer, and if they couldn’t perform to Starfleet’s standards they would have nowhere to go, no alternate plan and no family to help them pick up the pieces.

Once they were warmed up, they stretched with relentless singlemindedness, pushing their body to the limits of its flexibility. Their back twinged a warning while they were folding themself over their piked legs and gripping the soles of their feet with their hands. They moved to the weight machine to work their triceps and their damaged lats. The tingling burn of nerve damage that would never fully heal started in the deadened patch between their shoulder blades, a palm-sized spot that perpetually itched and could not be scratched because the skin was entirely numb. It crept across their shoulder blades and lanced down their arms and into the two smallest fingers on each hand with hot pins and needles. They pushed harder than they should, hard enough they might well pay for it tomorrow, but it felt like vengeance. They would punish the body that reminded them of what they had lost, and it would perform.

By the time Paden was forced to stop, they could barely drag themself to the shower. The hot water loosened things up enough they could dress. They hurried back to the quarters they were sharing with another couple of passengers, hoping to get to their bed before their workout—if they had to admit it, their self-harm—caught up with them. Fortunately, the tiny, four bunk room was empty. They crawled into a lower bunk, pulled the blanket over themself, and lay with the pressure of the bed against their throbbing back to ground them.

*

The captain’s chair squeaked a little when he turned it too fast. The padding was starting to break down at the front, thanks to uneven wear, and the seat was no longer perfectly level. There were scratches and dings in the armrests, and though he pretended he could recite the circumstances when each occurred, he couldn’t, not really. That blunt indentation the size of his smallest fingernail he definitely remembered, and he was sure Bones did too—or at least remembered installing the replacement for his front tooth. 

Jim probed at the tiny dent with a finger and wondered if they’d let him take the chair with him.

In front of him, Sulu and Arex moved the ship slowly, almost delicately into the docking clamps in orbit above Mars, following the precise instructions of the traffic controller. No one said anything. He could hear them all breathing, even Spock, who had taken a position just behind and to the right of his chair. There was a heavy metallic clunk and a slight jostle, and then the ship was still.

“Docking complete,” Sulu said.

“Docking Stage One acknowledged. Please transfer nav permissions to Utopia Planitia,” the controller said placidly.

Sulu turned to Jim, who nodded briskly. Sulu tapped a few buttons and said, “Permissions transferred.”

Uhura flipped off the comlink.

“Well, that’s it then,” Jim told the bridge crew.

“You remain captain of the vessel until you officially turn it over to Mr. Scott,” Spock noted.

“I do, I suppose. I think I’d like to walk the ship once before we head down to Earth. Would you care to join me?”

“I do believe I shall, Captain,” Spock said.

The comm chimed. “Engineering. Scott here. Could you have Lieutenant Uhura run the shutdown protocol on her station and meet me in Engineering?”

“Will do,” Jim told him.

“Should only take me a few minutes, Captain,” Uhura said.

Sulu reported, “I’ve already uploaded the telemetry from the Nav station, sir. Thought I’d head to the observation lounge for a bit and then down to the arboretum. They’ll need help transferring all the specimens.”

“And you, Arex?” Jim prompted.

“I have offered to assist Mr. Sulu.” He stood, and Jim noticed, not for the first time, but this time he noticed in a more thorough and poignant way, how Arex had to twist and bend awkwardly to get out of his seat, how he stretched his shoulders and tilted his head this way and that at soon as he stood. He and Sulu exited the bridge together.

A few minutes later, Uhura left for Engineering and Jim was abruptly alone with Spock on the empty and unusually quiet bridge. He stared at the blank viewscreen for a moment, then said, “You know, there are some things I haven’t done in this chair. This might be our only chance.”

“We have transferred the bridge controls to the Utopia Planitia staff,” Spock said quietly.

Jim winced. Anyone might turn on the viewscreen. “Yes. Right. I suppose Yeoman Delaney is already arranging for our things to be put on the shuttle to Earth.”

“Undoubtedly.” Spock walked around to the front of the command chair, close enough that the toes of their boots touched. 

Jim stood, so their bodies were flush together. He had to catch Spock’s shoulders for balance on the narrow platform, and once he found himself embracing his husband with their faces only centimeters apart, he couldn’t resist leaning in for a brief kiss. “It would have been fun, though,” he murmured.

“It would have been physically awkward,” Spock noted.

“Oh, I don’t know. I could sit on your lap.”

“I suppose I would, in that instance, have your back.”

Jim chuckled. “That’s it. I want the chair.”

“I am not sure that I—”

Jim held up a hand. “Toolkit. Now.”

Spock collected the toolkit from under his console.

Jim grinned. “Care to give me a hand?”

“Are you intending to install it in our apartment?”

“Yes!” Jim replied wickedly. He lay down on the floor to examine the bolts that secured the chair to the deck. “Could I have a number three wrench, Spock?”

The wrench snapped smartly into his outstretched palm. “Where do you intend for this object to reside?”

“Bedroom. Thought I could use it to read at night. And other things.” He popped the first bolt. “Steady that so it doesn’t fall on my head, would you?”

The sound Spock made might have been a sigh if Vulcans sighed. Kirk popped the other five bolts, then Spock lifted the chair off its platform and carried it easily, if somewhat awkwardly, to the turbolift. 

*

“Take care of her for me, Scotty,” Jim told the Chief Engineer. They stood on the shuttle deck which was connected to the orbital platform by a catwalk. Spock was a shadow at his side, his posture inscrutable. 

“I will Captain.”

“I stand relieved, then. Shall we, Spock?” Jim gestured down the catwalk and away.

“Of course, Jim.” 

Jim’s smile started out genuine, but as they walked down the catwalk and away from the ship that had been his for five years, with no real guarantee that it would ever be his again, he began to feel unmoored, as though his feet weren’t quite making contact with the floor beneath them even though he knew there was nothing wrong with the grav plates.

He concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, keeping his posture firmly upright and his head high. The space around him felt distant and unreal, the sounds hollowed out. The texture of the flooring beneath his boots changed subtly when they stepped off the catwalk and onto the concourse of the station proper. There was a cool, firm hand on his shoulder and along with it, a steady stream of support and a wordless question.

 _I don’t know_ , he answered. Spock seemed content to stand beside him for as long as it took for him to get his bearings. He faced the ship, still unwilling to take his eyes off it. 

_We will return to the stars, one way or another_ , Spock insisted with a certainty that Kirk knew wasn’t supported by logic.

“Shuttle to Earth leaves in thirty minutes and we have to be on it,” Jim said finally.

“Indeed. Shall we, Captain?”

Jim pressed his lips together and nodded. They turned away from their ship, their home, and matched each other’s stride, shoulders just brushing, down the concourse toward the shuttle that would take them to their next home.

*

It was, Jim had to admit, a very pretty campus. There were benches and monuments in pale stone, colorful plantings scattered among the wide walkways that led from building to building, everything done in pale plascrete swirled with glittering patterns designed to mimic marble. Admiral Joyce and Commodore Lewis stood just outside the transport pavilion, their faces schooled to a professional firmness that rivaled Spock’s expressionlessness. The aide beside them, a tall, spindly young man, held himself so stiffly he might have been a mannequin.

Jim had decided to beam down with Spock and Bones ahead of his junior officers in order to serve as a decoy. Uhura, Arex and Sulu were beaming down in a less public location than the main transport pavilion in order to meet with the department staff in Ops, Navigation and Tactics, and the Command School. Joyce stepped forward to offer a firm, brief handshake to Jim and Bones and a brisk nod in Spock’s direction. Behind them, half a company of cadets jogged in formation, singing the shanty about towing asteroids.

“Shall we?” Joyce said, gesturing toward the main administrative building on the opposite side of Archer Hall. As they passed the imposing building with its curving stairway and upswept roof, Joyce said, “I know you’ve got it in for this place. Not sure what your beef with Jonathan Archer is, but this building anchors the whole campus. It’s not going anywhere.

Spock issued a correction. “I do not believe any of us wish to destroy Archer Hall. It has historical significance not only to the campus but to the city as a whole. However, the interior remodeling project completed in 2230 to accommodate more students resulted in congestion in the hallways and main lecture space as well as negatively affecting the acoustics.”

“We’d like to restore it to the way it was in 2180,” Jim clarified, “While modifying some characteristics to improve accessibility.”

“Seems like a waste of resources,” Joyce opined. “At any rate, you’ll need the main hall for the plebe courses this summer. You can’t turn the whole summer into fun and games.”

“Hands-on activities are not just fun and games, Admiral,” Jim said. “They teach the skills cadets actually need when they go into service. I wish security and sciences, in particular, spent more time on case studies and simulations and less time taking tests. Some of them might have lived longer.”

They arrived at the administration building and followed Joyce to a conference room. Joyce took a seat at the head of the table beside Lewis. “I’ll turn Commander Spock and Commodore Lewis loose in a few minutes, but first I want to go over your tentative schedule. You’re sure you want to put the barracks challenge on 30 June, when the plebes have just met their squads?”

“Absolutely. Solves a whole world of problems. They have to work together and get to know each other, they can modify their barracks to accommodate cadets with different body plans, and the hidden puzzle will help to reiterate that teamwork and cooperation are more useful in Starfleet than ruthless competition.”

“So what are your plans when half the teams don’t finish before dark?”

“It’s a Friday. We’ll have floodlights up and they can work until it’s done, then they can be tired for Saturday’s sims and games.”

Joyce actually let out an approving chuckle at that. “I thought you were a softie.”

“Far from it, Admiral. I just think that right now the Academy is rigid where it ought to be flexible, and slipshod where it ought to be more challenging.”

“You’ll see. These kids may be book smart, but they’re not ready for what you have planned. They’ll fall flat on their faces.”

Spock interrupted, “Admiral Joyce, in what way is it unacceptable to provide opportunities for failure in a context in which cadets may learn from it, while it is acceptable to require some students to learn in physical circumstances that would be cruel if applied to prisoners of war?”

“The lecture halls aren’t that bad,” Lewis interjected.

“I have a simulation I will be presenting this afternoon, Mr. Lewis. I believe you will find it edifying.”

Joyce waved a hand. “Why don’t the two of you head off to the labs. The Captain and I have a few more things to discuss.”

“Of course, Admiral,” Lewis said. Spock caught Jim’s eyes with a wordless question and Jim responded with a slight nod.

Once they were gone, Joyce rested an elbow on the table in a gesture calculated to be casual. “So you married your XO.”

“I’m not the first to do so,” Jim replied. “In our case, it was a necessity and A Vulcan matter I am not at liberty to discuss, though definitely not a hardship.”

Joyce allowed his disapproval to show on his face for a moment before changing the subject. “You’re not going to do subpar cadets any favors by coddling them through their first year. They’ll just wash out later or worse, get themselves and other officers killed after they graduate.”

Jim sighed. “From where I’ve been sitting for the last five years, that’s already a problem. You’ve been sending me arrogant, shortsighted ensigns who are ripe to cause diplomatic incidents and don’t know how to handle themselves in a crisis. Now, it’s not all of them, but it’s too many.”

“That’s your opinion.”

“It’s my observation.” There were some things Joyce needed to hear. “Most often over the body of some fresh off the transport ensign who was too young to die.”

“And you think you can do better?”

“I think we have to do better, for these kids’ sake.”

Joyce shook his head and put on a patronizing smile. “You come in here, criticizing the way I do a job you’ve never had to do yourself. Just wait, you’ll see how difficult it is to shape these pampered civilians into officers.”

Jim smiled grimly. “I know I will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for sticking with this setup heavy episode, I know it's talkier than usual.


	7. Getting it together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a bit scattershot. Spock gets to know his boss and a coworker in the science department, Kirk recruits squad leaders for his special project, and Betazoid cadet Trinna Lau arrives in San Francisco.

Loathe as he was to leave Jim with Admiral Joyce, he could see the logic in acquainting himself with the current state of Starfleet science training. He kept pace with Commodore Lewis, walking the kilometer to the science cluster. They passed groups of cadets, some in rigid, disciplined formation, others, mostly fourth years, moving more casually about the campus in groups of two and three. Lewis cleared his throat. “I read your article on evolutionary processes in nebulae. You certainly encounter a fascinating variety of habitats in which organisms can survive.”

“We do. The ability of life, once initiated, to adapt to almost any imaginable habitat has been confirmed many times by our explorations.”

Lewis nodded. “Quite so. I suspect that you will appreciate the more powerful equipment here at the Academy, rather than whatever limited materials you had on board the Enterprise.”

“I find that ingenuity is stimulated by the need to use materials at hand,” Spock said, keeping his voice neutral.

“Hmm. Those weeks you spent stranded on the precontact Earth duplicate had to have strained your ingenuity to the limit. I can hardly imagine interacting with humans in that primitive state.”

Spock found Lewis’ arrogance increasingly grating. “Three hundred years is hardly enough time to render your ancestors primitives. The humans with whom I interacted spanned a similar range of sophistication to that of fully modern humans.”

Lewis made another dismissive noise in his throat. “Did you really build a subspace transmitter by yourself out of contemporary materials?”

“No.” 

Lewis was so surprised he paused in the walkway to look at him. “How did you get a message out to your ship, then?”

“I designed the transmitter, but I did not construct or operate it alone. Colonel Sherman Potter assisted in expediting the delivery of materials fabricated offsite according to my specifications. Corporal Max Klinger installed the long line, as I was injured and unable to climb. Corporal Walter O’Reilly fabricated most of the circuit boards and assembled the transmitter.”

He shook his head and started walking again. “Did I hear correctly that your crew is sponsoring three of those historical relics into this Academy?”

“You did. Corporal O’Reilly has been provisionally accepted into Communications. Nurses Ginger Bayliss and Margaret Houlihan, both officers in the United States Army, have been accepted as transfers.”

“Do you think that’s wise?”

“I believe all three will serve with distinction,” Spock confirmed.

“I heard McCoy is sleeping with one of the nurses. Who’s the other one attached to?”

“To my knowledge, none of the Enterprise crew is engaged in a romantic relationship with Miss Bayliss. And I find the question unprofessional.” He allowed himself to drop back just enough that they were no longer walking side by side, suppressing conversation until they arrived at the sciences cluster.

The buildings in this section had gone up over the past century and represented a variety of styles, from utilitarian windowless rectangular prisms to whimsically impractical curves and spires. The building into which Lewis led him was one of the latter, its interior an echoing great hall drenched with sunlight into which workspaces were wedged almost as an afterthought to the architect’s vision. Officers and cadets in lab coats gathered in small clusters throughout the cavernous foyer and disappeared into oddly shaped doors leading to the interior.

Lewis led him to a door that deviated substantially from square and down a curved hallway with a ceiling that varied in height from right to left and as the hallway proceeded. He passed a hand over the palm lock on a door. “I gave you the second nicest office in the place,” Lewis said magnanimously, gesturing for Spock to place his hand against the biometric lock.

The door opened on a twelve square meter space furnished with a desk, a small sitting area with two casual chairs and a low table, and bookshelves built into walls which, like every wall in the building, were neither straight nor square, but curved in ways that seemed a poor attempt to mimic four-dimensional space. 

Lewis took a seat in one of the low chairs as though he was in his own office, not Spock’s. Spock took the other seat. Lewis sat back, lacing his fingers in front of him. “I have serious doubts about how well the three time-displaced cadets are going to integrate into twenty-third century culture. Not to mention the cadet you sponsored this year. I have to ask whether you have taken leave of your senses.”

“I assume you are referring to Dahai Naraht.”

“The rock, yes. He weighs almost two metric tons and he’s going to outgas toxic waste continuously even if he doesn’t liquefy a classmate in a fit of pique.”

Spock had been expecting these objections and to an extent, agreed with some of them, but the strategic need to admit a Horta outweighed the moderate risks of doing so. “I must remind you that admitting one of Horta’s offspring per decade at minimum to the Academy is required by treaty. Naraht was selected for his emotional stability and intelligence from a cohort of over a thousand age mates. I have no doubt he will succeed if given a reasonable chance to do so.”

“Just don’t go handing out unreasonable chances. Commander Chgad in planetary sciences wants to discuss him with you as soon as you are free. Though knowing him, he’s probably forgotten by now. Down to the end of the hall where it splits into three. Take the left, then another left. I am certain you can manage on your own.”

Lewis stood, rapped his knuckles on the doorframe of Spock’s office, and left with no further comment. Spock explored the office briefly, planning what he might place on the shelves and the low table before following Lewis’ directions.

He followed the hallway’s graceless curves to a small lab. The door was left open, and inside the lab a Tellarite in a green cable knit sweater stood at a high table, facing away from the door. He did not turn around when Spock reached the doorway, nor when he shuffled his feet briefly in hopes that he might make his presence unobtrusively known. Finally, Spock tapped the door chime.

“The door is not closed,” Commander Chgad said more softly than Spock believed he had ever heard a Tellarite speak. “Come in, I am examining fragments of an asteroid that passed near a neutron star. The stress fracture patterns are something to see.”

Spock accepted the invitation and walked around the table to stand opposite Chgad, who was viewing electron micrographs of the asteroid on a screen. He was on the older side, perhaps sixty, with white hair sprouting haphazardly from his head and face and a generous smile displaying a pair of tusks, one of them broken off near the root. “I was told you wished to speak to me about Dahai Naraht.”

“Ah yes, I hear you are bringing me a Horta. Fascinating species, are they not? Primarily composed of silicates and silanes. I had the privilege of examining a piece of the matriarch’s carapace, dislodged during First Contact, I believe. Phenomenal.”

“Dahai will be attending the Academy as a cadet, not as a geological specimen.”

“Of course, of course.” Chgad took a heavy breath and turned away from the screen. “I imagine the boy will be a bit agoraphobic, given he’s spent his whole life in a cave. Have we given proper thought to housing as yet?”

“I have considered the matter. I believe a small, below-ground structure with a direct exit to the outdoors would be ideal, though it should be large enough to contain whatever furnishings he requires.”

“Hmm. I’ve already got a third year onto sourcing his dietary requirements.”

“Keep me updated on the status of that project. In addition, there is the matter of class attendance. Virtual attendance from his quarters will not be acceptable.”

“Of course not, of course not. Paper pushers don’t see the value of hands-on learning. But he doesn’t have hands, as such, does he? No, I suppose not.” He wriggled his fingers. “Exactly where does he keep his manipulative organs?”

“They extend from the underside of the body.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll run a section of Methods of Inquiry in one of the shuttle garages. That ought to contain him.”

The geologist did not behave like any Tellarite Spock had previously met. He expected to be challenged at every turn, and the fact that he wasn’t made him wonder if he was being treated seriously. Chgad’s behavior would be deeply insulting on Tellar, akin to treating a colleague the way one might treat an infant. “You are still here,” Chgad said when the pause had gone on longer than must have been reasonable. “Are you waiting for me to dismiss you or can I hope you might have a genuine interest in the effect of hypergravity on matter?”

“As a matter of fact I would appreciate discussing your work,” Spock said, as he might if interacting with a human or for that matter, a Vulcan fellow scientist. Chgad beamed, then launched into an excited discussion of the images on the screen. Spock listened and formulated questions to ask when the lecture paused, but the first that came to mind had nothing to do with the subject matter. “Dr. Chgad, I noticed that your style of interaction does not correspond with my previous encounters with Tellarites. Is this a conscious choice?”

“Would that it were, Commander,” Chgad replied. “Starfleet is a refuge for misfits from many worlds, not just Earth, you know. Now, the immense pressure and shear stress to which these objects are subjected causes them to incorporate veins of exotic matter into the crystal structure…”

*

“Hey zh’Talseh, wait up!”

Zh’Talseh shortened her strides to allow the human cadet to catch up. Once Japra had caught up with her, they matched their stride, making brisk time toward the administration building. The summons had come with only an hour’s notice and both of them had been swimming laps on the ass end of campus. 

“What do you suppose this is all about?” Japra said, though she was probably just diverting nervous energy into idle talk.

“I suspect it has to do with our duties when the first years arrive.” 

Japra seemed unsatisfied with that explanation and continued, breathless, “But why call a meeting so suddenly?”

“Who knows? The new commandant arrived yesterday. The faculty are jumping like scared squirrels. Maybe they’re changing a bunch of rules about how we’re supposed to treat the plebes—yell more or yell less or something.”

“I hope he doesn’t take one look at me and decide I’m not scary enough,” Japra worried aloud.

Zh’Talseh scoffed at the smaller woman. “If he does I’ll challenge you to spar and ask him to watch.”

“And let me win?”

“Shhhh no! I’m not going to make a fool of myself in front of _the_ Captain Kirk.”

“Kirk? Enterprise Kirk?” Japra reached up to touch her turban as though she was worried he’d consider it a deviation from proper uniform.

“Yes, hadn’t you heard he was here? Anyway, you can beat me in hand to hand with your eyes closed and I’m stronger than you.”

“Not that much,” Japra allowed.

“Only because you live at the gym.”

They jogged up the steps and stopped outside the door to the classroom to which they’d been summoned. It was one of the small ones. Two hundred second years had been assigned to shepherd the new crop of plebes, but there were only a couple dozen cadets standing outside the classroom. She noticed Vashan standing placidly at parade rest, Jikyi propped against the wall nearby, tapping his fingers on his elbows, and Hara, planted directly in front of the door as though claiming the space.

The man who opened the door was bright-eyed and jovial, handsome if one didn’t mind skin the color of dough, and seemed too young to be a Commodore. “Come in, all of you, have a seat wherever you like, this is not a formal occasion.”

Most of the other cadets sat. Vashan pointedly did not. Zh’Talseh slid into a seat next to Japra despite the risk that she would get them into trouble with her editorial remarks. As soon as they were all as settled as they were going to get, the Commodore—no, those were Captain’s braids on his sleeve—perched on the edge of the desk at the front of the room and said, “I’m sorry for having called you all here on such short notice, but I’m glad to see that almost everyone I summoned arrived immediately. No doubt you’re wondering why you’ve been called here. How many of you, show of hands, have heard about the Federation Council’s injunction against Starfleet Academy?”

All of the nonhumans raised their hands. To their credit, most of the humans did too. Nice of them to take an interest. 

“Good, I’m glad. Those of you who don’t, find out. My name is Jim Kirk, Captain Kirk to you at least until they catch me and pin on Commodore’s bars. I’m here to solve the problem, and I’m counting on you to be a part of the solution. You’ve all come recommended by advisors and instructors as having exceptional leadership skills and in particular as being good at bringing out the best in others. It’s not a common skill, you should be a bit proud right now.”

Zh’Talseh decided to skip right over proud and into worried. Japra turned toward her and opened her mouth as though to speak, but Zh’Talseh shook her head slightly.

“So here’s my plan. We’re placing the highest risk plebes into ten to fifteen of the two hundred squads and hand picking squad leaders to guide them toward success. This is a strictly volunteer position; I don’t want anyone taking on this challenge who doesn’t genuinely want to see it through.”

The first step toward eventually commanding, or even advancing past Lieutenant, was taking responsibility for a squad of plebes. Cadets were evaluated on how well those plebes performed. A squad that lost more than a plebe or two could kill a squad leader’s career before it began. A hand went up beside her. Japra, of course.

“Yes, Cadet—” he squinted as though he was trying to read her nameplate.

“Japra, sir. Will we have the authority to advocate up the chain for our plebes?”

“That’s a very good question. And yes. You’ll have some authority in that regard, especially if you observe abuse or unfair treatment.”

Another hand went up. Once acknowledged, the cadet said, “Will we be penalized if we choose not to volunteer?”

“No. If this kind of challenge isn’t for you, I don’t want you here. You can walk right out that door, no questions asked. Now we’re going to take a short break. If you want to take on the challenge, meet back here in ten minutes. If not, don’t.”

Captain Kirk walked out of the room. Beside Zh’Talseh, Japra was grinning. “You up for it?” she asked.

Zh’Talseh thought. She had no family, no clan back on Andoria. Starfleet was her home and family, for better or worse. Taking on a challenge like this could kill her career if she failed, but if she succeeded, it would not only move her closer to the head of the list for coveted starship postings, it would likely give her the chance to build relationships with the other volunteers and the plebes she was assigned. Her instinct to build family where it was lacking told her there was only one choice she could make. “I am,” she said, reaching out to her own squadmate from just last year.

Japra slapped her hand. “We rock!”

Zh’Talseh tilted her antennae forward in acknowledgment. They did, and they would.

*  
Trinna Lau brought the Lydrice into the Sol system above the ecliptic, the green gridlines on her heads-up display guiding her into the crowded space lanes of the heavily populated system. A challenge flashed on the display and she quickly sent the transponder code. A pleasant feminine voice responded, “Welcome to the Sol System, Betazoid Free Trading Vessel Lydrice. Follow the highlighted path to Starbase One. You will be assigned berth FT-1296-G-theta.”

“Acknowledged, Sol System Space Traffic Control,” Trinna replied, then taxied the family ship along its assigned path, other ships visible at first as yellow triangles on her display, but then, as the congestion near Earth increased, she could see them shining with reflected sunlight and their own running lights.

Her mom sat in the copilot’s seat, singing warm pride and rumply distress. _Are you well, mom?_ she sent, though she could guess what was the matter.

 _Just missing you already, Brightness,_ Mom sent back and reached across the space between their seats to squeeze her hand.

Trinna grinned back at her. _I’ll miss you too, I’m just too excited to feel it yet._

“Docking control requesting access to guidance systems,” SSSTC said, and Trinna flipped a switch. The ship hitched slightly as its controls were taken over by the dock control.

“Guidance systems are yours,” Trinna acknowledged.

They slid neatly into dock, and the ship jerked again slightly as the docking clamps engaged.

Trinna stepped away from the helm and bent to pick up her bag. When she’d slung it onto her back and straightened, she saw all nine other members of the Lydrice crew squeezed in together at the rear of the bridge, their hands pressed flat over their hearts. She tapped over the deck plates to her mother, who had taken a place at one end. Mom pulled her into a breath-stealing hug. “Work hard, have fun, and don’t let all those stick in the mud aliens steal your spark.” 

Everyone had to have their hug and their moment to touch the family weaving. Trinna felt as though they were spinning a net of light around her, a web of protection and family that would stay with her no matter where she went or what might happen. She reached the hatch at last and headed outside, only stumbling a little on the stairs.

Then the door closed and she was alone on the walkway, though the light woven of her family’s love still clung to her. She found her way to the transport station and handed her itinerary card to the tech. “Stand right there,” the older man gestured wearily and made some internal remark about kids and their slovenly habits that Trinna ignored. The transporter caught her up, dissolved her, and reformed her in a transport kiosk just outside the Academy.

She bounced in place a couple of times to acclimate herself to the local gravity, then carefully stepped down onto the street, a little overcome by the sheer number of fellow travelers milling about. Colorful clothes fluttered in the light breeze, snatches of unspoken thought and spoken conversation mingled, and the air smelled of exotic plants and unfamiliar cuisine. Excitement bubbled up inside her, adding to the delightful cacophony.

I week wouldn’t start for several days, and as an Ops cadet, she wouldn’t muster in until the second day, but she had a couple of appointments before then, one with medical and one for a placement test that would clear the way for her to study engineering. This year medical wanted to see all cadets from species that had not yet produced five Academy graduates for an in-depth physical and counseling.

Trinna wasn’t the first Betazoid to attend Starfleet Academy. She was, according to her grandfather’s sobering research, the sixth in ten years. None of the others had made it through the first semester. There was no reason to believe the daughter of lower class, houseless free traders would fare any better. Grandfather thought she was foolish to waste a year and risk her health trying. Mother thought she was brave—though she was already planning the consolation party she’d throw for Trinna when she returned to the Lydrice in a few weeks or months.

She glanced at the map on her datapad and started walking toward the dormitory that would house the incoming cadets until they were sworn in. Earth gravity was a few percent stronger than the gravity on Betazed, just enough, along with the different feel of natural gravity instead of grav plates, to make her mindful of her steps so she didn’t catch her toes on the sidewalk. She looked up at a bird whistling overhead, caught a glimpse of the sky receding so far above her, and had to look away. The lack of a ceiling overhead was just unnatural.

Strangers smiled at her, friendly and knowing. There was a building with a glass door and a sign shaped like a cup. Curious, she poked her head in to see people sitting at tables or on couches, reading and talking while drinking and eating small breads or cakes. There was a young woman her age standing behind a counter. “Hi!” the woman said, smiling more broadly than her mood justified. “You look a little lost. Did you just arrive from off-world?”

“I am starting at Starfleet Academy,” she said, trying to speak Federation Standard without the aid of her Universal Translator. Her voice sounded uncertain in her ears.

“Would you like something?”

“To drink?” She fished in her pockets for a credit chit.

“Of course. And maybe a pastry to go with it? What’s your species?”

“Betazoid, why?”

“Safety first,” the woman explained. “Oh good, you’re in the database. Any species atypical allergies?”

“No.” 

“Do you trust me?”

“I—why should I not?”

“Hot chocolate and a cinnamon streusel muffin, I think. I’m guessing you’ve never had caffeine, so we'll avoid coffee this time. It’s a mild stimulant, safe for your species but takes a little getting used to.”

“No caffeine, then.” She didn’t need any further stimulation—the lidless sky was unnerving enough already.

“Do you have a Federation ID?”

“Data code or card?” she asked.

“Data code’s fine. All you need to do is verify receipt. Sit wherever you like, we’ll bring it out.”

Trinna sat down to people watch. Every planet was different, but the closer you got to core Federation worlds the more social networks and planned services replaced money based systems. The spectrum of economic systems that actually worked (and the ones that failed) were among the more interesting subjects she’d studied—not interesting enough to make her want to switch her area of emphasis away from engineering, but interesting nonetheless.

The hot chocolate was a muddy brown drink that didn’t look very appealing but smelled wonderful. A puff of fluffy cream sprinkled with something dark brown decorated the top. The muffin was a round, sugar topped cake that wasn’t unlike a lot of desserts she’d encountered on one planet or another. She decided to start with a tiny bite of it.

It was very sweet, but with a bit of spicy complexity. She used a spoon to sample the fluffy stuff. Sweet and bland, but not bad. She screwed up her courage to try the gray-brown drink. One tiny sip, she decided, and then she could bury the flavor in muffin if it was terrible. 

It was even sweeter than the muffin, creamy and complex, with a pleasant bitterness underneath. She took a second sip. Definitely tasted better than it looked. By the time she got to the bottom of the cup she had a new favorite drink. Still, a pity it looked like used up cleaning water.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for sticking with me. I know this is kind of a plotless Michener right now.


	8. Archer Hall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spock and Jim discuss their plans for Archer Hall with Joyce and Enwright. Vera Alonso breaks up a fight at summer camp.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, I'm still going.
> 
> (I am fully aware this 'verse may be an acquired taste, too many OCs, too much academia. I may slow down a bit with it to make some space for other works after this episode is done.)

Archer Hall was an impressive edifice made, as many large academic buildings were at the time, of molded white plascrete, decorated with faint silver flecks and swirls. The effect resembled marble but was much more resistant to weathering. Unfortunately, the hundred-year-old exterior hid a far less functional forty-year-old interior. Academy growing pains half a century ago had led to a remodel which doubled the seating in the main auditorium by stealing nearby classroom spaces and replacing the old seats with much more “efficient” smaller ones. 

Jim remembered the building well. The faint odor of cadet sweat that survived all attempts at cleaning, the ventilation that no longer quite cleared the air, the sound system that tried and failed to compensate for acoustics scrambled when the walls, floors, and ceilings were moved. Spock fell to the rear of the group as soon as Admirals Joyce and Enwright arrived in hopes that his silent presence would soon be forgotten and his Vulcan hearing would pick up some actionable intelligence. A part of Jim wondered if they were bringing mission brain home with them. Could Jim be nursing an animus against Enwright because of his role in the murder of Excalibur’s crew and the near destruction of the Enterprise?

He suspected the answer to that question was yes, but he suspected that animus was justified. “Admirals,” he acknowledged both of them. Both nodded back, Joyce looking surly, Enwright with a broad, false smile.

Jim ushered them into the auditorium. “What we plan to do here is return the auditorium to its original configuration, which will improve the sound quality and allow us to provide appropriate seating for nonhuman cadets, including nonhumanoids.”

“I have seen your plan. If implemented it will no longer be possible to fit an entire cadet class into the auditorium.”

“The space was built for twelve hundred. It will never comfortably seat twice that number. It’s debatable whether you can even safely do so.”

They reached the first row of seats at the far right of the auditorium. Jim could hear Joyce and Enwright muttering to each other, but he couldn’t quite make out the words. He turned around to face the Admirals. Enwright was almost two meters tall and built like a string bean, Joyce shorter and stockier, with middle-aged spread softening the contours of the muscle underneath. “Sit down,” Jim said.

“Excuse me?” Enwright protested.

“I thought the four of us could discuss the building acoustics and how we might handle those circumstances which do require an entire cadet class to meet.”

Enwright took an aisle seat, his knees angled up toward his chest, and turned out into the hall. Joyce jammed himself into the seat across the aisle. The seat sides squeaked against his bulk. “So I’m tall and he’s fat,” Enwright said. “What’s your point?”

“My point is cadets don’t get to choose their seats and they can spend hours every day in this space. If it’s this difficult for you to get yourselves into these seats, how hard will it be for an Edoan or a Tellarite?”

“Gutting the building seems extreme.”

“It’s overdue,” Jim argued. “Mr. Spock, you’ve prepared a presentation on the acoustics and lighting. Could we see that?”

“Certainly, Captain.”

Spock made his way to the podium at the front of the auditorium. “Lights, thirty percent,” he said. Images appeared on the curved screen behind them. The screen had been designed to make it possible to clearly see material from everywhere in the auditorium. Unfortunately, the remodel had moved it lower and further back along with the stage, and seats had been added along both sides. Jim had led Enwright and Joyce to some of those seats.

Spock began to speak at a reasonable volume. The sound system picked up his voice along with two subtle echoes that muddied his words. “Could we move closer?” Joyce asked.

“Can cadets assigned to these seats move closer?”

Joyce looked like he had sucked down a whole lemon. Spock continued to discuss angles and surfaces, explaining exactly why the sound quality had changed from so finely tuned that a lecturer could speak comfortably without amplification to so muddy that even an amplified, articulate speaker would struggle to be heard in roughly a quarter of the seats.

When he had finished and returned to stand at Jim’s shoulder, Jim took his next turn. “Worst of all, this building no longer meets fire code, and the variances you've applied for and gotten from a sympathetic city council don’t change that. Spock’s model estimates that starting from filled to capacity, it would take nine minutes to empty this auditorium.”

“Our cadets will be more orderly and efficient than the random civilians assumed by traffic flow models,” Joyce protested.

“Spock accounted for that. Civilians, or cadets in the first month or two of service would take twice that long to exit, assuming there were no catastrophic pileups at the doors. Those doors are too narrow, their placement produces bottlenecks and there are too few of them.”

“We’re on Earth, in spitting distance of Starfleet Headquarters. There’s nowhere safer in the Federation.”

Spock interjected, “To the contrary, it makes this location a prime target for those who might wish the Federation harm. In addition, while seismic stabilizers have reduced the risk of earthquakes, they have not eliminated them. The mere fact that a disaster has not yet happened does not mean one will never occur.”

“Under the circumstances, I am unsure we will be able to make a case for requisitioning the resources.”

“Are you admitting defeat before we even start?”

“I am being realistic,” Joyce sniffed.

“I think you may have mistaken the purpose of this meeting. The remodel is going forward. We have selected an architect, a T’Reng from Vulcan’s southern savannah. I intend for the work to be completed in time for graduation next May.”

“Mr. Kirk, I am still the Superintendant of Starfleet Academy. You are the Commandant of Cadets. You do not have the authority to order infrastructure changes on this scale.”

“I do if it is essential to my mission parameters.”

“That’s a stretch, captain.”

“I do not believe it is,” Spock said, backing him up. “Anecdotal evidence acquired from interviews of former cadets indicate that this building’s configuration is a significant stressor for students with auditory, visual, and psionic hypersensitivities.”

“If they can’t handle a few hours in here they won’t be able to handle starship duty.”

“To the contrary, sir. In seventeen years of service aboard starships, I have been required to endure locations as ill-suited to occupation as this auditorium on only fifteen occasions. Nine of those occasions were Starfleet functions, six of them held in this auditorium, and four others were the result of capture by hostile entities, I can safely conclude that this room, were it used to house prisoners, would violate interplanetary law.”

“I didn’t know Vulcans were prone to exaggeration,” Enwright snipped.

“We are not.”

*

The stars shone brightly over the canyon, but after a long day of hiking in rough country, Vera would have preferred to be rolled up in her sleeping bag rather than sitting by the low fire with a pair of scowling twelve-year-olds. 

“So are you two going to tell me why you were out fighting by the privy at two o’clock in the morning?”

“I just got up to take a piss,” Cam, the taller, skinnier one said. “Tony followed me and jumped me.”

There was always more to the story, no matter how much these boys wanted to make it simple. “And do you have any idea why he might have singled you out?”

Cam shrugged. “He’s just mean, I guess.”

Vera sighed. “In my experience, very few people are ‘just mean.’ People do things for a reason, whether or not it’s a good one.”

“He threw my backpack in the river on purpose!” Tony shouted.

“You rolled the canoe!” Cam shouted back. “I didn’t do anything.”

Tony started to his feet, only taking his place back on the log when Vera looked steel at him and pointed firmly. “You rolled the canoe because you were fooling around.”

“All you do is complain and tell everybody what to do!”

Vera made a cutting gesture. “Off topic. So. You two were in the canoe with all your gear and it capsized, and Tony, your backpack wasn’t recovered?”

“Yeah. And I strapped it in so he must have taken the strap off on purpose.”

“Cam, did you ever unhook Tony’s backpack from the bungee cord?”

“No!”

“Are you sure? We were on the river for three hours this afternoon. Think it through, both of you.” Tony was serious and prickly, with a habit of expecting everyone else to be as organized as he was. Cam, on the other hand, was careless and had a habit of blaming other people for his mistakes. Neither one of them were mean spirited or given to practical jokes, though.

“We got out apples and protein bars to snack on,” Tony mused. “Which were in my bag. But I was in the front of the canoe, so I couldn’t reach.”

“So I got them out for us,” Cam said. “And I had to take off the bungee cord to get the bag open.” He winced, briefly recognizing his error before deflecting onto Tony. “You should have reminded me to put it back on.”

“I didn’t even know you took it off!” Tony brought his wrist to his mouth to worry at his cuffs with his teeth.

Cam opened his mouth to say something, most likely something snide. Vera hissed sharply and snapped her fingers to capture his attention. “OK, so Cam, you were responsible for Tony’s backpack getting lost. I want you to think about what you can do to make that up to him. Don’t say anything right away. I want to know tomorrow.”

She turned to Tony. “Tony, you’re not off the hook. How does attacking someone in the woods in the middle of the night and waking up half the camp solve your problem?”

Sleeve chewing switched to the rapid tapping of his fingers on his knees. “Maybe I can knock some sense into him.”

“Never in the history of history has anyone’s memory been improved by a beating,” Vera said, neither knowing nor caring whether that was precisely true. It was plenty true enough for the circumstances. “Cam may have lost you your stuff—and we’ll be able to get you a bedroll and other kit before you head back to bed—but you physically attacked him. That doesn’t go without consequences. Now I am not going to decide those in the middle of the night either. For now, both of you strip down and use the camp shower. You smell like pee. Cam, you loan Tony something to sleep in and I’ll get him a spare bedroll. Scoot.”

The boys headed off to an entirely necessary camp shower. Vera pulled out an extra bedroll and canteen to get Tony through the morning. She’d be within her authority to send him straight home, but that would be the opposite of useful. Tony needed to learn to put up with himself and other people being imperfect and he wasn’t likely to learn anything from being sent home, where he would likely be severely punished and possibly prevented from participating in the very activities that would teach him self-control.

The boys returned from their unheated shower in the cool night air, shivering and grumbling, Tony in a pair of Cam’s too long sweatpants that bunched up around his ankles. Vera handed Tony the bedroll and canteen. He took it, looking if possible even tenser than before. He stared at the ground and shivered. “Cam, back to your tent. Tony, stay here a minute.”

She watched Cam until he was back in the tent he shared with three others. “Tony, I’m putting you in the isolation tent. Do you know why?”

“So I don’t hit anyone else?”

“No, because you look really peopled out and the cold shower probably didn’t help. Get some sleep, by yourself, and I’ll come for you at first light. You’re helping me with morning rounds.”

Tony’s shoulders sagged and he trudged off to the little pup tent next to the gathering tent. Vera returned to the small shared sleeping area at the back of the gathering tent where the camp counselors slept at least in part to guard against ravenous middle schoolers raiding the bear box.

Her datapad was blinking.

“You have a message from Registrar Adams at Starfleet Academy,” Vera’s datapad intoned in the bland voice programmed to read all her mail. She silenced it, hoping that she hadn’t awakened Cusa and Daniel. Trufita looked up from her spot at the end of Cusa’s bunk with a head tilt and a tail wag.

Vera wondered what Starfleet could possibly want. She’d been rejected months ago, before the first of the year, and it had been made clear to her that she didn’t need to bother applying next year. Starfleet had no place for a cadet who couldn’t read. She sighed. It was probably an error. She almost erased the message unread, but instead, she bit her lip and said, “Read message.” The first couple of lines were the names of people she’d never heard of, ranks and salutations she didn’t care about. ”Skip ahead to the body of the message, please,” she told the pad.

“We are happy to extend an invitation to join the Starfleet Academy Class of 2024. Rule changes since the first of the year have affected your eligibility and upon review of your application, you have been selected to replace a cadet who has withdrawn their candidacy. Please report to the main Starfleet Academy campus on Monday, 27 June 2020, Stardate 8178 to accept your commission—”

“Pause.” She couldn’t possibly understand what she was hearing. “Read the body of the letter again.” She closed her eyes to better concentrate on the words. “We are happy to extend—”

She listened to the entire letter all the way through, twice. She had to sit down on her bed. Trufita hopped up beside her to plant a hesitant paw on her leg, then butted her chin with the top of her head and squirmed under Vera’s arms to curl up in her lap. Vera scritched the dog’s ears and wondered if she would genuinely be welcome or if they were just trying to make some kind of quota.

Monday meant command track. So not only were they accepting her, they were still letting her try for command? Maybe it wasn’t even a quota issue. Maybe it was a clerical error. In that case, showing up would serve them right, and it wasn’t like she’d have to travel off-world to do it. Fine. She’d show up right on time and show them she was Starfleet material. The worst that could happen is they’d find their error and send her home.

It would make a funny story for the grandkids someday.


	9. Not made of stone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dahai Naraht travels to Earth on the supply ship that services Janus IV. After a harrowing journey, he arrives in San Francisco and is greeted by Spock and Walter O'Reilly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I took some liberties in developing Naraht's physiology and psychology, based on what's known in canon: They live entirely underground in caves they at least partially construct, they produce very strong acids for mobility and defense, and they appear to consume minerals for nourishment, and they appear to hatch in large groups, at least during this part of their history.

Vanderberg patted Naraht’s carapace idly with one hand, giving comfort in the typical human fashion he’d adopted since the Horta’s child was a silverling underfoot. Resting aboveground on the spaceport platform still felt precarious and unnatural. The world by rights should have a roof on it, not stretch upward to infinity. “It looks like your ride is here,” the colony administrator said.

“How do you know?” Naraht said, his sonar-based language automatically translated into human speech by his vocoder.

“Visible light reflecting off the skin of the ship. It’s still out of range of your sonar. Are you ready for this?”

Was he ready for a ten day trip through empty space in a metal box with strangers? “I am ready to represent my people.”

“Are you ready to go into space?”

Naraht vibrated his disquiet. “No.”

“You’re too smart to crawl around in a mine for the rest of your life, kid.” Vanderberg’s comlink blipped. He flipped it open. “Vanderberg here.”

“This is Abilene. Your order’s dropped off and we’re ready to beam the Horta up.”

Naraht hunched next to his luggage, trying to rid himself of the feeling that he might just fall right up into that empty sky. “His gear is with him on the pad.”

“If Starfleet wasn’t paying me a small fortune to haul that creature to Earth I wouldn’t be doing this. That thing could melt me into a smear of stinking ash in a second.” I’m sitting right here, Naraht wanted to say. 

Vanderberg blustered into his comlink, “As could anyone with a type II phaser. Both his sponsor and I have vouched for him.”

The fragility of organic beings had been drilled into Naraht and Horta’s other children from their first days out of the egg. It had featured in many a childhood nightmare. By now, he felt securely in control of his emissions, but he still followed every safety drill with obsessive care. The transport Captain’s lack of trust in his basic decency hurt. 

“All right, standby for beam up.” For a moment, Naraht felt like he really might be about to fall right up into the air. He scrunched his tingling sensory fringe. A weightless swoop and a moment of blankness, followed by more of the fizzy tingling and he found himself in a new place entirely. He was alone.

He scanned around himself. Tritanium alloys above and below, before and behind, and to his right and left. The space was about three body lengths on a side and two high, though one wall held plastic crates full of refined lanthanoids and, toward one end, machined parts and wire. There was a door at one end, locked, but too narrow for him to pass through even if it weren’t. Beyond the cube of the room on all but two sides were other spaces, some of them occupied. To his left and below him was nothingness. His luggage was still beside him, fortunately. 

When no one came to welcome him aboard or tell him what he was supposed to do right away, he decided to take more of a look around. It took a moment to convince his body to move, pressed as he was against a triple layer of metal and dead space before the world just stopped, but he managed to force himself to make a circuit of the room. The left wall had panels that could open and close if he understood the mechanisms inside the wall correctly. Near the door was a panel with buttons on it. The buttons were flat rather than embossed so he couldn’t read them. 

An hour later Naraht would have done a spacewalk for the ship’s intranet access code.

Four hours later, as the temperature in what was clearly a cargo compartment dropped to two hundred seventy-eight Kelvin he began to wonder why no one had yet come to see him.

The next day, when the temperature in the cargo compartment stabilized at two hundred seventy-four Kelvin and he began to slip into torpor, he considered burning his way through the door, but he did not want to make the organics angry enough to harm him. He was lonely and cold and bored and worried that they might reach Earth and forget he was in their cargo hold. He told himself they couldn’t do that. They’d need the cargo hold, and they’d have to deliver all those crates sometime. He had not been forgotten. He wouldn’t be forgotten.

His datapad had books loaded onto it and could read to him for months before running out of power. He had enough things to do, technically, but he had no one to talk to or play games with, and not knowing how long he was going to be trapped in this barren, uncomfortable room made him restless.

By the next day, his mind had begun to invent horror stories. The organics flying this ship obviously didn’t consider him to be a real person. The man Vanderberg had been talking to was afraid of Naraht, afraid and repulsed. What if they didn’t plan to take him all the way to San Francisco. All they would have to do was open those big cargo doors to his left and he’d be blown out into space. What if that was what they were planning?

He knew he was being ridiculous. He reminded himself of the “small fortune” Starfleet had paid the supply ship to bring him to San Francisco. The captain of the Abilene wouldn’t want to lose his fee. Would he? What if someone on the Abilene crew was a relative of someone his mother had killed? He smelled titanium and aluminum in the air and realized he’d been sweating acid onto the floor. When he moved, he found enough etching to make him even more nervous. He had to get ahold of himself before he literally wore a hole right through the ship.

By the time the tenth day rolled around he was beginning to get hungry and he’d left brittle, warped patches all over the deck plates. The vibration of the ship changed suddenly, lowering in pitch and changing from a slow sine wave to a more steady rumble. It changed again a few hours later, and then again before a sudden thump reverberated through the cargo space. A few moments later the now familiar tingle of transport signaled the end of his lonely passage.

*

Walter O’Reilly was staying in Captain Kirk and Commander Spock’s spare bedroom until I-week rather than in the increasingly crowded and uncomfortable off-world student housing. He was so deeply embedded in the interactive language program he was using, struggling with Andorian pronouns and cases, that he didn’t notice the knock at his bedroom door until the Commander stepped through it. “Are you in a position to pause your studies for a time?”

“Gee, I don’t know. I still can’t remember what gender chairs are in Andorian.”

“First feminine, unless they have armrests, then second feminine.”

“I’m never going to get this.”

“All the better reason to go outside and move around, Radar. The human mind learns best when intensive study is alternated with rest and physical activity. I am walking downtown to meet a newly arrived prospective cadet. I would appreciate your company.”

Walter set down the datapad, dug the heels of his hands into his eyes, and stood, arching his back to work out the kinks. “Are they staying here until I-week too?”

“No. Dahai Naraht will be staying in alternative quarters. However, I expect he would benefit from social interaction with another cadet in similar circumstances. His world, like yours, is a Federation protectorate rather than a full member, and he will be the first of his kind to attend the Academy.”

Walter pushed his feet into his shoes. “I’ll do my best to show him the ropes.” As soon as I find them, he thought.

Spock waited in the apartment’s doorway for him to catch up. “Are your studies progressing well?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” Walter reported. “I’ve passed practice tests in Vulcan and Klingon. Still working on Andorian grammar, but I’ll get there.”

“An excellent attitude to maintain. Your first year at Starfleet Academy will likely be more physically and academically taxing than anything in your life so far. What is most important is that, regardless of how well or poorly you believe you are doing, you do not give up.”

“I don’t intend to, sir.”

It was pleasant outside, sunny, and just warm enough for short sleeves. They took the walking path to one of the smaller side gates that led off the Academy campus and into downtown San Francisco. Just as they passed through the gate, Walter got an uneasy feeling that he thought he probably should check out. He stopped where he stood. Spock turned back. “Is there a problem, Corporal?”

Soon, cold, scared, but at a remove. That wasn’t much to go on. “Yes, but I’m not sure what, yet.”

“Are we in imminent danger?”

Walter folded his arms across his chest and closed his eyes, chasing the threads forward. After a few seconds, he shook his head. “It has to do with the cadet we’re meeting. Feels uncomfortable, not dangerous.”

“In that case, I am certain we will be able to address whatever difficulties may arise,” Spock said. “Shall we continue?”

Walter nodded and followed. They crossed a wide street with no cars, the bicycles and skates taking up one set of lanes while pedestrians took another. The off-world transit station was a block away and around a corner. Shuttles settled into the landing bays, then rose into the air sedately, only to shoot into the sky as soon as they were clear of the heavily trafficked areas near the ground.

“Naraht will be arriving via transporter at cargo platform fourteen,” Spock noted. 

“Why is he arriving on a cargo platform?”

“Naraht is a Horta, a silicon based life form. He is much more massive than a humanoid traveler.”

“Oh. So he’s really big?”

There was a longish pause and Walter realized he had said something obvious. “Yes, he is large, but he is also very heavy.”

They arrived at platform fourteen just as a stack of boxes appeared. “Keep it moving, please,” the attendant said, gesturing to a delivery person, who moved an antigrav hand truck underneath her cargo and hauled it out of the way.

Spock stood just off to the side of the platform, feet planted shoulder-width apart, hands folded neatly behind his back. Walter found a place to stand between him and the rest of the crowd and tried not to fidget. It was crowded and busy, people and pallets of cargo moving in all directions, appearing on the raised transporter pads and disappearing from others. A shimmer, low to the ground and shaped like a craggy dome began to take shape on the platform in front of them. When the transport was complete, a glossy red boulder sat on the transporter pad. It had a dented gray box stuck to its side. 

The platform attendant wrinkled his nose and blinked. A second later the smell of burning sulfur reached Radar’s eyes and nose. He tried not to sneeze. The attendant shouted, “Hey, whose is this thing? Hazardous materials are supposed to be delivered to the North dock.”

Spock stepped forward to correct the attendant. “This is Dahai Naraht, a first-year cadet. Naraht, would you care to introduce yourself?”

The attendant interrupted sourly, “Passengers are supposed to come in on the East platforms.”

“I am aware,” Spock replied. “As you can see, Mr. Naraht would have difficulty using the smaller passenger platforms. Mr. Naraht, please follow me. We have quarters prepared for you on campus.”

Naraht stayed right where he was and said nothing. He felt like freezing needles, scared and frustrated and very, very cold. His body shuddered and trembled. The box stuck to him made a few static pops and a whine.

The attendant gestured toward Naraht. “I need you to get it out of here. You’re holding up deliveries.”

Walter stomped forward and got right in the attendant’s face. He scowled up at him. “He’s not an 'it'.” The attendant stepped backward, giving Naraht a clear path to follow Spock off the platform. The rock creature seemed to unfreeze. He lumbered off the platform, first stiffly, then more smoothly, skimming over the sidewalk like a flying carpet, leaving behind a bright yellow duffel bag. Walter scooped it up, staggered under the surprising weight, then had to jog to catch up with the both of them.

A couple of blocks from the transit station, Naraht turned onto a gravel covered garden path away from the busy street. Walter stopped to lean against the wall beside him, breathing hard. The red painted rock creature beside him was as scared as those soldiers the choppers used to bring in back in Korea. “He’s really scared about something.” He slid down the wall to sit beside Naraht. “It's going to be okay, you're safe here. I’m Walter. Walter O’Reilly.” He understood Walter, that was pretty clear, but his unspoken words were too soft and muddy with interference to make out. “I think he wants to talk to us, but he can’t.”

“I am aware. Naraht, I would like to examine your vocoder.” Spock knelt gingerly next to the Horta, who was still trembling. “I believe he is chilled.” 

Spock examined the box without touching it. “The bolts are corroded. I assume the internal components are as well. Without a vocoder, he can understand us, but he cannot speak.” He pulled out his datapad, still kneeling beside Walter and Naraht.

After a couple of minutes, he put the datapad away and said, “Naraht, Corporal O’Reilly and I are both telepaths. Walter has a somewhat greater range than I, so I believe he would be the wisest choice to attempt communication. If you consent, please display two handling limbs. If not, display only one.”

“I can’t make out any words,” Walter protested. He didn’t want to fail and disappoint his teacher, regardless of whether disappointment counted as an emotion. He squashed down his nervousness, not wanting to make Naraht feel any worse than he already did, but squashing his emotions down wasn’t one of his strengths.

Two flattened, multi-jointed arms, each with four grasping ends, emerged from underneath Naraht. Three of the fingerlike extensions on each “hand” curled up, while the last one poked upward. It took a moment for Walter to recognize the gesture, but as soon as it clicked he returned Naraht’s “thumbs up.” 

He made himself smile, though he wasn’t sure Naraht would understand. “So, um, Naraht. I know you can understand me, but I haven’t had a whole lot of luck so far. I’m gonna give it my best shot.” He scootched back so he could rest his back and head against the retaining wall and let his arms dangle over his knees. First, he ought to tell Spock what he already knew. “He’s cold. And hungry. Feels like POWs when they get rescued, kinda numb and brittle.”

Spock seemed surprised. “I assume you are unable to converse without attempting deeper contact?”

“Sorry.” He fiddled with his beanie. “He’s kinda—fuzzy? I guess?” 

“Horta minds operate on slightly lower subspace bands than those of humanoids. It may take you some time to find the correct pattern to emulate. In addition, their language is based on sonar, and is hence more similar to ideograms than spoken language. Rather than attempting to hear Naraht’s thoughts, try to see them.”

“Okay?” O’Reilly agreed dubiously. He squeezed his eyes shut. “I really have been practicing.” He winced internally at how defensive that sounded.

“I have no doubt. This will of necessity be more difficult than your previous efforts, but I am confident the two of you will manage.”

“I’m glad one of us is. Okay, um, Naraht, here’s goes nothin’.” He looked at Spock, who was probably judging him because if this wasn’t a test he didn’t know what was, wondered if it was possible to die of awkwardness, and told himself to stop dicking around and get on with it. Usually, this meldy thing was as easy as falling. The hard part was slowing the whole thing down enough to keep from feeling sick. Naraht’s pattern seemed just out of reach, the emotion nearly drowning him, but the details faint and vague. 

If he remembered anything from all the lessons and practice it was that where he put his attention determined where he went, so he focused on those faint pressure waves and rhythms underneath the stronger feelings of fear/curiosity/discomfort. The connection, when it finally formed, did so all at once. He gasped at the suddenness, then nodded. “Okay, okay. We got this.” _Can you show me what happened?_

Walter/Naraht was in a small, cold room with boxes filling one side, the door locked and too small to pass through, the communications system inoperative, watching the frightening cargo bay doors for hints that they might open and spit him into space. He couldn’t quite get a sense of time. _Was it the whole trip?_

Confirmation from Naraht, then another shift in focus, as the alien figured out the mechanism for their communication, and started properly holding up his end. _I’m where I’m supposed to be, right?_

The rapport having stabilized, Walter opened his eyes and tried speaking aloud. “You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be. We’ve got you. Everything’s going to be fine.”

_I apologize for damaging my vocoder._

“Not your fault." He looked for Spock. “They left him alone in a freezing cold cargo bay with no communication for the whole trip. He thinks they were too afraid of him to talk to him or anything.”

Spock’s facial expression actually changed slightly. He must be really angry. “Understood, Corporal. Can you convince him to come out into the sunlight? He might warm more quickly.” He flipped open his comlink. “Uhura, are you available?”

“Sure, what do you need?”

“I need you to call up to Starbase One security. Have them detain the Abilene, call number ICS 34901D on suspicion of unlawful detention and mistreatment of a minor, aggravated.”

“On it.” There was a pause while she relayed the information, then, “What happened?”

“They transported Dahai Naraht for ten days with no access to communication, in an unheated cargo space, as though he were a geological specimen.” The bitten, clipped tone confirmed Walter’s suspicions.

“He must have been terrified!”

“Corporal O’Reilly is in rapport with him now. His vocoder was damaged sometime during the trip.”

“Poor kid. The granite and fluids McCoy ordered for him are in his quarters. Can he make it back without help?”

“I will attempt to ascertain that information.” He turned back to Walter. “Can he make it the rest of the way to campus?”

 _I can walk,_ Naraht answered, a little affronted. _Warmer that way._

Walter nodded, then clambered to his feet, using the wall for support. “I think we can talk regular now. He says yeah, moving around will warm him up.”

“Very well. Naraht, we have secured below ground quarters for you to use until you join your squad. When we arrive, I will arrange for you to be seen by Dr. McCoy as soon as you have eaten.”

Walter relayed Naraht’s next question. “He wants to know if he’s going to be locked in.”

Spock addressed Naraht directly rather than Walter. “Of course not, though there is a curfew for cadets you will be expected to respect.”

“Will he be by himself?”

“The sulfur compounds you emit can damage humanoid lungs in an enclosed space. We are studying how best to solve this problem.”

Walter’s stomach dropped. He had to stop walking. “Commander Spock?”

“Yes?”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for him to be by himself right now. Naraht’s used to having all his brothers and sisters around him and if he’s all alone, it’s gonna be like being cargo again.”

Spock paused to consider. “Understood. Perhaps the two of you can arrive at a solution to the problem.” They walked through the side gate into campus and started toward the first years’ dormitory.

“What are you studying?” Walter said, to make conversation and distract Naraht.

_Planetary science and metallurgy. You?_

“Communications and cryptography.”

_Like codes and stuff?_

“Yeah, I like playing with numbers and patterns.”

Spock’s comlink chimed. “Spock here. Lieutenant Uhura, have you alerted the authorities?”

Walter’s sponsor’s voice sounded from the device. “They’re holding Abilene and her crew. There’s a question of jurisdiction as Naraht’s people are not full Federation members and he is not yet inducted into Starfleet.”

Spock almost sighed. “Naraht’s transport was arranged by Starfleet, hence their grossly inadequate quartering is in Starfleet’s jurisdiction.”

“’Fleet transportation authority would like to send someone to interview Naraht at the earliest convenience.”

“Have you requisitioned the replacement vocoder?”

“Of course I have.”

“I suggest that the interview be postponed until Dr. McCoy completes his examination and the vocoder can be fitted.”

“I’ll pass that on,” Uhura said patiently.

“Be sure they are aware that the vocoder failure was itself a result of being confined to a small, poorly ventilated room under extreme stress for several days.” They arrived at the first-year cadets’ dormitory, which was where the cadets without Starfleet captains with apartments in San Francisco for friends would stay until the end of I-Week and then again for the fall semester. Where they were going to be over the summer was a hush-hush mystery Walter already knew and about which Spock and the captain had sworn him to secrecy. 

Spock stopped in front of an angled cellar door. “Naraht, this is your room. The panel to your left will open the door. You will never be locked in.”

Naraht rumbled forward and touched the panel. The room was almost as round as a bubble, with smooth, glassy ceramacrete walls. A low desk was built into one wall, and another had drawers that opened at a touch and closed flush with the walls. A polished granite urn sat beside the desk. Naraht explored the cozy space for a few minutes while Walter and Spock waited just outside.

Bones and Uhura strolled up to them, McCoy towing a wheeled bag. The Communications officer, no, the Operations Commandant, waved at them brightly. When they stopped beside Walter, Bones bent to pull his materials out of the bag with sharp, tense movements, anger evident in the rigid lines of his face. Walter stepped back a pace.

“I ain’t gonna bite, Radar,” the doctor muttered. “How’s our young friend doing?”

“He’s not gonna charge or nothing,” Walter said. He sat down at the edge of the short ramp leading into Naraht’s. The Horta noticed him and lumbered up the ramp. The urn was gone. Walter supposed Naraht might have eaten it. “This is Bones,” Walter said by way of introduction, “He’s a doctor, and this is Lieutenant Uhura. He can understand you fine, Bones, he just doesn’t have a proper voice.”

“Thanks for interpreting for him, Radar.”

Walter’s ears got hot. “Aww, it’s nothin’. He’s real cold still.”

Bones sat down on the lip of the ramp beside Walter and took out his medscanner. “Criminal, what they did to you. Just criminal.” He looked at the readings and puffed out a breath. “I prescribe food and drink and sleep. And then a visit with a counselor tomorrow after your vocoder’s replaced.”

“I’d like to confirm some measurements and take the damaged vocoder back with me,” Uhura said. “I should be able to install the new one this evening.” She tapped Bones, who moved out of the way to let her get at the vocoder. “There’s a thermostat in your room. You can set it as high as forty degrees without triggering an alarm,” she told Naraht. 

“Sir,” Walter said, hoping he wasn’t interrupting.

Spock answered, “Yes, Corporal?”

“Do you think I could pitch a tent out here to keep him company tonight? He gets awful upset when he thinks about being alone.”

Spock looked from him to Bones, who nodded. “That would be acceptable. I will have one brought to you along with a filter mask if you would prefer to remain here.”

Walter nodded. “Can you bring my datapad, too? Me and Naraht can study last year’s Core Points.” He realized he was still carrying Naraht’s bag. He swung it down onto the ramp. Naraht plucked it up with a couple of those hands he kept hidden under himself, opened it, and started putting the contents around the room. Most of them he couldn’t identify, but the fat rectangle of a reinforced datapad was pretty easy to spot. “Hey, how does that thing work since you don’t see?” he asked.

Naraht set down what looked like a weird iridescent sculpture, scooped up the datapad and a silver package, and planted himself back on the ramp. He plucked a wipe out of the package, ran it over the pad, then held it out to Walter.

The pad lit up with the standard lock screen when he tapped it, but in addition to the standard display there were spots of tingly roughness on the screen that made the images feel like they were embossed. Naraht cleaned a four thumbed hand with another wipe and tapped in his code. The screen changed, as did the forcefield embossing. “That’s groovy!” Walter said.

Dr. McCoy stood. “Uhura needs to check on that vocoder and I’ve got some work to do up at the clinic. Think you two will be all right here until Spock gets back with the tent. And Spock, bring these kids some lunch, something with a high reduced metal content for Naraht.”

“I will do so, Doctor.”

Just like that, they all rushed off and it was just him and the rock. _Thanks for sticking around,_ he said. Walter was surprised that, for as strange as he looked, he talked so much like a human.

 _My people live in community with the mining colony on Janus IV,_ he explained. _I have known Standard since I hatched._ Naraht fiddled with his datapad and it started playing a bouncy song he was pretty sure he’d heard before, then he disappeared into the back of his quarters. The unmistakable sound of a shower was followed by a cloud of steam billowing out of the door and a wave of relief that wasn’t Walter’s as ten days of acid sweat went down the drain.

Walter had a feeling he and Naraht were going to be the best of friends.


	10. Courage is a muscle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kelpien Cadet Imre meets Dr. McCoy and gets to know some of her fellow cadets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made up a lot of stuff about Kelpiens because describing the vahar'ai as an evolutionary process is too painful for the evolutionary biologist in me. I needed to make it something that makes biological sense given what we already know. So, for the purposes of all prairieverse works:
> 
> The vahar'ai is a stress response that generally affects older adults, turning them from breeders to defenders of the group. It is functionally equivalent to menopause and results in a loss of fertility. When the vahar'ai was artificially induced on Kaminar in 2255(?) dates fuzzy in my head, almost all of the adults changed over, and most of the children did not, which has resulted in an age stratified culture in which the pre vahar'ai young adults continue to be treated as though they are children, even though they are many decades away from passing through the vahar'ai naturally.

  
Leonard stomped into the clinic, set down his bag far more gently than his mood warranted, and shouted, “I swear if I get my hands on that freighter captain I’ll throw him in a broom closet for a couple weeks, see how he likes it!”

Margaret had been putting up pictures on the walls of Leonard’s new office. She spun around, electronic hammer in hand. “What’s gotten down your pants, Len?”

“One of the contractors Starfleet hired to transport a cadet from his homeworld locked him in a cargo bay for a week and a half. Kid’s hypothermic and traumatized and there’s not much I can do for him, with his physiology.”

Margaret set down the hammer. “Is he going to be okay?

Leonard turned away to scrub at his face, using the moment to regain a semblance of composure. “Physically, yeah. Horta are tough. I left him with Radar. He’ll let me know if the kid goes south on us.”

“So you going after the guy who did it?”

Leonard snorted. “No, I’ll let Spock do that. He’s the kid’s sponsor, so he’s got dibs. And from the look on his face—you know the look.”

Margaret nodded. “That freighter captain isn’t going to know what hit him.”

“Hm,” Leonard agreed. “Do you have that list I asked you for?”

“All first years belonging to species that have graduated fewer than five cadets, and a separate list of all species hybrid first years. There are eighteen cadets on the first list, and three on the second.”

Leonard slid into his chair without looking, his datapad in one hand, a cup of strong black coffee in the other. “Some of these kids have physicals on record already. Who is this Dr. Winston?”

“Why?”

“It’s like where he didn’t know what to write in he just left it blank. These physicals are useless. Schedule all twenty-one of these cadets with me as soon as you can get them in. And give me a full hour for the visit and to update the chart. I don’t want to miss anything and I want to get them talking.”

She handed him the list. He wasn’t going to have time for more than three or four today, not with needing to go back to check on Naraht. “I’ll take the Kelpien, the Hanlen, and the Pluran today. Schedule the rest over the next week, but try to get each one in on or before their intake day.”

“I saw the Kelpien was already in the waiting room. I’ll get set up for her,” Leonard said.

Margaret draped her arms around his neck and tilted her head up for a kiss. Leonard obliged her, but only for a second. “We’re on duty, Nurse,” he chided, “And that kid’s been waiting long enough already.”

“You’re no fun at all,” she told him. She tapped his cheek and walked away, slowly enough for him to appreciate the view.

A few minutes later she popped her head back into his office. “Imre is in Exam Three.”

*

Imre sat on the too-short chair in the clinic waiting room. The doctor was late. That sort of thing was to be expected at a clinic like this, one that managed emergencies as well as the day to day business of keeping cadets healthy, but it was a change in her expected routine and that was enough to get her threat ganglia tingling. She reached back to assure herself that they had not emerged, deliberately tensed and relaxed the muscles of her legs, her abdomen, and her arms in sequence, and did not allow herself to imagine what threats might be lurking. 

Starfleet was not closed to Kelpiens, as such, but she had been a small child when they freed themselves from the Ba’ul, and like most of the very young, she had not passed through the Vahar’ai. But she had felt stifled by the rules the Defenders had put in place to protect Bearers, and at twenty she might not be adult enough for Kaminar, but she was adult enough for Starfleet. She hoped.

A nurse, probably human, probably female, emerged from the door into the clinic proper. “Imre?” she said.

“Here,” Imre responded. 

The human stared at her a little longer than polite Earth convention allowed. “There was an emergency with an arriving cadet,” she told Imre. “Right this way.”

Imre followed her, noting and dismissing minor dangers along their path. She stepped into the scanner—could it overload and electrocute her? Bombard her with radiation? Ridiculous, she told herself firmly. Technology is not necessarily dangerous merely because it is unfamiliar. Still, she startled at the chirps and whirs it made. Technology at home was designed with safety first and gentleness a close second, given that virtually all Kelpiens under the age of twenty-five existed in a permanent state of hypervigilant fear. Given historical averages, she could expect that state to continue until her fifties or sixties.

The dread that leadened her limbs when she thought about spending the next several decades on Kaminar, marrying, farming, having babies, and doing pretty much nothing else drove her to seek another path. She sat in the offered chair in the exam room. The nurse tapped a few keys on her terminal. “I’ve got all the basic scans you’ll need, but the doctor likes to take his time to talk with all the new cadets, follow up on anything unusual, and so forth. Do you have any concerns you’d like me to mention to him?”

The question almost caused her threat ganglia to emerge. It was difficult to know what a reasonable concern was. Only one question seemed both appropriate and important. “How do I make sure I pass the psych eval?”

“You don’t. If you don’t pass the psych eval, you don’t want to be here.” The nurse seemed to decipher Imre’s expression because she paused at the door to add. “I’m sure you’ll do fine. Dr. McCoy will be right in as soon as he goes over your scans.”

She closed the door behind her and Imre was alone in the tiny room. There were instruments along the walls that, used improperly, could harm her. There were drugs, which were really just very carefully targeted poisons, in those drawers. As long as she didn’t touch either, she was safe. She drummed her fingers against the edge of the chair.

The doctor knocked, paused, and entered. “Afternoon, I’m Doctor Leonard McCoy, you can call me Doctor. And you are Imre. She/her pronouns?”

“Yes,” she confirmed.

“How is Earth treating you, Imre?” He pulled up a chair to sit beside her.

“It is pleasant. Much like Kaminar, only busier.”

“San Francisco is definitely a busy place, especially this time of year. Fortunately, we have good data on Kelpiens, so I can say confidently that you are a healthy pre-vahar’ai woman, biochemistry in normal parameters for your stage of life, no significant issues. There are a couple of things we ought to discuss before your psych eval, given what I see here.”

Here it came. “Of course, Doctor,” she said, trying to sound confident.

“Kelpiens have two major psychological characteristics that differ drastically from human baselines. The first is an elevated esper rating that mostly manifests as mild empathic ability, though there’s some evidence that your species may be somewhat prescient as well. Your Penrose scan came up with an approximate score of 215, which is about average for species.”

“What do I do about that?”

“Your instincts may be biased by anxiety, but they’re fundamentally good instincts. Don’t hesitate to discuss them with your superiors. Remember, most humans are building their hunches based on a slightly narrower data set than you, especially given that you hear, see, and smell more sharply than we do as well. That and you’ll be more vulnerable to psionic attack than most humans. You get the opportunity to learn mental self-defense before you graduate, you take it.”

Wonderful, something new to lie awake at night worrying uselessly about. “Yes, Doctor,” she said.

“Now the other issue is the hypervigilance.” Imre stiffened up involuntarily, arguments bubbling up and getting stuck in her throat. “I’m gonna tell you something. When I joined Starfleet, I was terrified of flying, especially in space.”

“But you got over it,” she said, trying to keep the sarcasm out of her voice.

He shook his head. “No, not really. Flying through space is a ridiculous thing for organic life forms to do. But I exposed myself to my fear. I faced it over and over until I learned the exact shape and size of that fear. And once I knew it, I could work around it or push through it. And that’s something I know you can do.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re here. Think about all the times you’ve been afraid between deciding to join Starfleet and showing up in my office today. Courage is a muscle, and you’ve been working it hard already.”

“Courage is a muscle,” she echoed because an answer seemed to be expected and she couldn’t at that moment think of one.

“That’s right. Now don’t spend the rest of your week studying. Once you swear in, you won’t be allowed off campus until September.” When is September? she wondered, resolving to look up the local calendar as soon as she returned to her temporary quarters.

“Go on. I’ve got what I need.”

“Yes, Doctor,” she said and got up to leave, deliberately slowing her movements so she wouldn’t look like she was fleeing the room.

*

According to Earth day names, it was Thursday, the 23rd of June. On Monday, the 27th of June, all prospective cadets staying on campus would follow cadet rules and the cadets’ schedule. That meant Imre had, if she understood the Earth calendar correctly, three and a half days left before she turned over her freedom to Starfleet, presuming she passed the psych eval. She couldn’t exactly study for it, so she found herself brooding in her room.

Her door chime pinged. “Open,” she said. 

The door slid open. Trinna Lau, her next door neighbor and not human despite appearances, looked up at her. She was wearing a sparkly gold wrap and even more sparkly makeup. “Imre! It’s nice out, let’s go see if we can meet some people.”

She touched the back of her neck, near her threat ganglia. “Is that allowed?”

“Dorm curfew is 2300 hours. It’s 1930. We have plenty of time.” She looked Imre over. “You’ll do. I like your bloomers, the fabric is so shimmery.”

“You do seem to be fond of glitter,” Imre said, letting a little teasing into her voice. She felt comfortable around Trinna, though she wondered if the Betazoid was projecting some kind of calming aura.

Trinna’s eyes went wide. “I’m not!” She chewed her lip. “I mean, not much. Anyway, everything’s less scary with a buddy. Come on.”

“I’m not scared to go meet people,” Imre insisted.

“Really. Because that’s not what it feels like to me.”

“Really,” Imre insisted. She grabbed her bag from off the bed to join Trinna in the hallway. All the way down the hall to the lift Imre noted, The hallway isn’t slippery. The lift is safe. This is Starfleet Academy, they keep things in good repair.

“What are you doing?” Trinna asked.

“Walking,” Imre answered. Watch the front steps. It’s twilight, there are places to hide in those shadows.

“No, I mean the whole telling yourself what is and isn’t dangerous.”

Imre winced, embarrassed. “Can you not do that?”

Trinna shrugged. “Maybe. You’re kind of yelling.”

They got out to the sidewalk. The air carried a faint bite of sulfur. Imre could hear soft speaking, probably Standard by the rhythm of the words, along with a wave of clicks, whistles, and low hums that she felt in her chest as much as heard. It was a strange, unsettling sound. “What’s that noise?” Imre said.

Trinna ignored her. She took another step toward the threat and Imre reached out to block her path. Under the wash of noise, she could hear two voices, one human or near enough, the other with the slightly tinny resonance of a vocoder. “There are two of them, around the corner. One of them is using a vocoder.”

Beside her, Trinna sighed impatiently, but she folded her arms across her chest and fixed her gaze on a spot of air a meter or so away. After a pause, she shook her head. “I’m only sure about one.”

“There are two. I can hear them.”

“Well then let’s go around the corner and see for ourselves.” She turned off the path into the grass. Light shone from around the side of the dorm. After a few seconds, Imre followed her.

There was a tent set up beside a low slanted door leading into what might be a basement. A young man, short, round-faced and more or less human, sat on the grass facing the open door telling a story that involved a lot of large gestures. “And boom! Mashed potatoes everywhere!” he shouted, flinging his arms up in the air. “And that’s spud chucking.” The smell of sulfur was stronger here. It stung its way through her nasal passages. 

Trinna left Imre behind to get a better look down into the basement. The human looked up, saw both of them, and made a wide smile that wrinkled his whole face. Trinna smiled back. “I’m Trinna Lau. This is Imre,” she said, pointing back at her.

The human stood and raised a hand, then fiddled with his jacket, then bobbed his head, looking at a loss for what to do. Finally, he said, “Walter O’Reilly. This is Naraht.”

Imre couldn’t make herself get any closer to that sound that rattled itself into her chest cavity. Something was very wrong in that basement. “Trinna, don’t get any closer.” 

“Just a second,” Trinna told the human and jogged back to Imre. “What’s going on? You feel like you’re about to have a panic attack.”

Imre took a moment to swallow and breathe. She clenched and unclenched her hands. “This is. This is normal. For Kelpiens.” She wasn’t sure if she was reassuring Trinna or herself. “We can sense danger and death. And that thing down there is capable of killing all three of us just like that.” She fluttered one hand up and away.

“Can it, or will it?” Trinna asked. 

Imre froze, thoughts whirling and skipping. Footsteps swished on the grass. “Are you okay?” the human asked them.

“Imre senses danger from your companion, Walter,” Trinna answered formally. Imre was rooted to the spot, words caught behind her tongue. The urge to run twanged in her ankles.

The human smiled again, this time more gently. “Aw, Naraht wouldn’t hurt a fly. We’ve been shooting the breeze all afternoon. Come on over and meet him.”

“What is he doing here?” Imre managed to get out.

“He’s a cadet, just like us. He’s going into planetary science. I’m hoping to get a shot at communications.”

“Engineering,” Trinna told him. Imre couldn’t remember the name of her area of specialization around all her brain’s commands to get away and take the two more fragile, slower humanoids with her.

“We’ve got snacks and tunes,” Walter said. “Come on, he’s lonely out here all by himself.”

The only thing keeping Imre from bolting for her room was a feeling of obligation to protect these two humanoids from whatever monstrous creature lurked in the basement. “It could dissolve our bones.”

“But he won’t,” Walter insisted. “What do you mean you sense danger?” The question wasn’t derisive like she would have expected.

“It smells like poison.”

“Yeah, he does stink a bit. But he doesn’t seem like he wants to dissolve any bones. Is that it?”

“No. Kelpiens can sense danger.” 

“Okay. So does it feel like Naraht wants to hurt us?”

“I don’t know, it’s just dangerous!” Why did humans ask so many questions?

“Does it help if I tell you that Naraht’s body makes aqua regia and some other corrosive fluids so he can move through rock where he comes from? He could turn us all to puddles of goo if he wanted to. But he doesn’t want to. He’s more afraid of himself than you are of him.” Walter looked back toward the basement door. “I’m out here with him because he can’t fit in the dorm and he’s afraid to sleep alone on a strange planet. That and I like him. He’s a good guy.”

Imre made herself walk forward, one step at a time. Courage is a muscle. She rounded the corner to see a red enameled boulder perched at the entry to the basement. Orangey-pink fringes fluttered where its body touched the ground. The low vibration and higher-pitched hum swelled over her and faded.

“Hello,” he said through the vocoder, which managed to convey hesitation in its faintly mechanical tones.

Trinna sat on the damp grass, as relaxed as though she wasn’t right next to a deadly rock monster. Imre crouched just behind Walter’s camp chair and faced Naraht. “Hello, I’m Imre.” 

Walter passed her a sleeve of cookies and a bottle of a fizzy purple drink that was “not quite Grape Nehi, but close enough for now.”

She managed to force herself to look away from Naraht and up between the branches of the trees overhead. The sky was washed out by the campus lights, but the brighter stars still sparkled overhead. When she looked back, Trinna was sitting close enough to Walter that their knees touched and Naraht had changed the music emanating from his datapad to something with an intricate drumbeat. Cadets approached in singles and pairs until a dozen of them were sitting in a rough circle, tapping their hands and feet to the music, shouting out requests for songs from their own homeworlds, and dancing until 2300 hours rolled around and some fun averse security ensigns sent them all off to bed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next planned stories in this universe include:  
> 1\. A piece with Sidney Freedman and Sherman Potter on Earthtoo.  
> 2\. A "how TOS Kirk and McCoy met" Academy fic  
> 3\. The Cadets' first days in the Academy.
> 
> I hope to get all of those started over Christmas.

**Author's Note:**

> Guide to OCs and borrowed characters:
> 
> Vera Alonso: Command candidate from Argentina. Works as a camp counselor at a therapy summer camp.  
> Paden Barrie: Denevan Helm/Command candidate. Survivor of the Denevan neural parasite as a tween  
> Sofie Gnidziejko: Vulcan/Human hybrid raised culturally human in Chicago, schooled in Ontario. Paramedic and Medical candidate.  
> Major Margaret Houlihan: Earthtoo emigre and borrowed MASH character. In a relationship w. McCoy. Nurse.  
> Imre: Pre-Vaharai Kelpien. Ops (Engineering)  
> Admiral Joyce: Current Superintendant of Starfleet Academy. Realy should retire.  
> Trinna Lau: Betazoid Engineering candidate. Shipkid.  
> Lessl: Gorn Sciences candidate (Entomology). Daughter of the guy in Arena.  
> Dahai Naraht: Borrowed from Diane Duane's beta canon. Horta. Planetary Sciences.  
> Luc Olamina: Biochemistry and materials science. Starfleet legacy kid.  
> Walter (Radar) O'Reilly: Borrowed from MASH. Ops Cadet (Communications)  
> Nen Tolou: Hanle (small, birdlike aliens). Stellar Cartography.


End file.
